SCREENWRITING IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS - PART 3: EFFECTIVE, NOT PERFECT
EFFECTIVE, NOT PERFECT
When you are screenwriting, forget About “Perfect”. The word, the concept - every aspect of it. Don’t pay much attention to similarly toxic words such as “good” or “bad” either. They will dramatically slow down and most likely kill your chances of finding success. Ignore them.
In previous posts, I’ve talked about the dangers of screenwriting with an artist’s sensibilities and, in this section, I’d like to build on that and talk about what healthy screenwriting goals look like and why.
Many people feel that when it comes to screenwriting…
“Perfection is the enemy of progress”.
Plenty of people respond positively to this old saying, but many don’t understand what it actually means and use it to justify bad practices. Bad practices such as …
Delivering something UNDERCOOKED.
Delivering something that IS NOT EFFECTIVE.
Perfection is bad - Reason #1
Pursuing perfection is first and foremost a mistake because it’s not achievable. It’s not achievable because it’s quite literally impossible. It’s impossible for me, for you, and for even the most successful screenwriters in history. No one has ever created anything that is objectively perfect. So …
NEVER pursue “perfect”.
Always pursue EFFECTIVE.
Perfection is bad - Reason #2
“Effective” is a much better creative Northstar because it forces you to articulate your goals at the very beginning of the process. For example, if you write a comedy, and you want your script to make people laugh, then that’s the goal and also the test. If your script does not make other people - preferably strangers (friends and family do not count) laugh, it is not effective. Period. You must identify exactly what you want your script to accomplish and then you can see immediately whether or not it does after you’ve shared it for high-quality feedback with qualified readers who won’t coddle you. Simple.
Perfection is bad - Reason #3
But let’s say you have your own definition of “perfection” that is actually within your reach. Is that a good idea? NO. It's still a really bad idea. Pursuing your own specific, personal interpretation of perfection is also a complete waste of your efforts because as I just hinted at in #2, …
You are not the audience.
Perfection is bad - Reason #4
Further, the pursuit of perfection is a really bad idea because it’s a huge distraction. It distracts you by exaggerating the importance of even minor things. Irrelevant details will suddenly seem critical to you. You can wind up pursuing perfection in nonsensical elements that literally no one but you will care about. And then what will you have accomplished?
When you focus on perfection, you can’t distinguish between relevant and irrelevant. You can’t distinguish between important and trivial. And most often, it’s because you are not focused on the audience - the people you are supposed to be crafting a story for. If you are pursuing any interpretation of “perfection”, know that you’ve gone astray. You’ve become focused on yourself. You can never forget about the audience. You should ALWAYS be writing in service of the audience.
Resources are finite. Your energy is finite. You only have so much “bandwidth” (time and effort) to dedicate to your screenplay and if you can’t prioritize what actually matters, you’ll run out of resources and you’ll …
Deliver something UNDERCOOKED.
Something that IS NOT EFFECTIVE.
We’ve all watched enough cooking shows to know… UNDERCOOKED IS NEVER GOOD
If screenwriting is just a hobby and you are literally only writing for yourself, then you get a “pass”. You can just write for your own amusement, or some kind of personal therapy (which I totally respect and would never try to talk you out of). And, in that case, you never actually have to be effective.
However, if the goal is to compose a screenplay that could be turned into a successful film - and specifically to sell it - then you have to learn to satisfy yourself during the process and to satisfy everyone else afterward (with your amazingly effective script!).
Accept failure as an inevitability. At least temporarily. You will write scripts that don’t work - that are not effective. Be prepared. When it happens, open up, and focus on understanding WHY your script does or doesn’t work for other people – for your audience - and then, using the information you gather from high-quality feedback, fix it or ditch it.
The point I’m making is that it’s important to get out from under your own personal biases and preferences. Creating a screenplay that is influenced only by what you “like” and applying your own sensibilities to your work suggests that you are the end consumer, but that is never the case. Again and again, I’ll remind you that …
YOU are NOT the audience.
It’s easy to look at films that you don’t like, that are outside of your personal preferences, and declare them “lowbrow junk” or “pretentious nonsense”, but judge-y labels like those are completely irrelevant. All that matters is whether or not they were effective. Did they draw an audience? Was the audience entertained? Did they generate enough sales to make a profit? Then they were effective.
Sharknado (2013) and Snakes on a Plane (2006) are not films synonymous with quality, but they were effective. Enough people enjoyed and supported those films to do business. In fact, Sharknado went on to become a six-film franchise! And in many cases, people loved those movies because they were “bad.”
So, be aware that you can write “bad” screenplays and make a living. Writing scripts that are “bad” is sometimes the very point. If the writers of Sharknado and Snakes on a Plane went into those projects with the goal of writing a schlocky B-movie full of wooden dialogue and two-dimensional characters, then despite your distaste for the final product, those writers were, in fact, effective.
I also have to point out that writing material like that is not easy. At some point I want you to consider what writing a Hallmark Rom-Com would be like. Many people like to say those films are “bad” as well. But they are wildly popular. They deliver exactly what they promise to deliver. And, contrary to popular belief, they are not at all easy to write.
Ultimately, it’s all a matter of perspective. Don’t judge. Making movies is insanely hard - even “bad” ones. And anyone who gets the job done deserves some respect. Yes, even the team behind Sharknado.
In an earlier post, I talked about the four areas of discipline that I think all screenwriters need to be effective at, but in more general terms, I believe your success will likely be determined by:
Your ability to speak
(how effectively you articulate your ideas verbally)
Your ability to write
(how effectively you tell your story on the page using the industry‘s weird and counter-intuitive formatting language)
The quality of your ideas
(how effectively you develop your concepts before writing and then execute those concepts to elicit a specific emotional response from your audience)
It’s important to know how to fully develop a concept. That’s an often overlooked fundamental. It’s also important to understand and identify exactly what it is that you are writing and how you want your audience to respond. Several of the tools, strategies, and the overall process that I share with my clients are designed to address these issues and to force the writer to be very specific about what it is that they are writing through every stage of a screenplay’s development because you can’t just wander around and hope you get lucky.
Writing effectively has nothing to do with luck.
For these and many other reasons, perfection (and the pursuit of it) is worthless. Good and bad are relative. Effective is not. So, your only goal should be to …
Write an EFFECTIVE screenplay.
So Then… How Does Someone
Become an Effective Screenwriter?
I’d suggest that the first thing you need to do - well before you start even thinking about doing business - is to set healthy, reasonable, personal goals for yourself. Goals that you can actually achieve and feel good about. You are going to be working at this for a considerable amount of time, so you need to experience victories with all of the inevitable failures or this will become unpleasant and stressful for you pretty quickly.
Let’s start by asking some very simple questions and using them to set some really basic goals. Start with a really simple one:
Ask Yourself …Why?
Why do you want to be a screenwriter?
Then set a simple goal around your answer such as … “I feel like this is something that I might be really good at and I want to know if I can do it.” Your goal then is to simply ascertain if you can write effective screenplays. (My guess? More than likely you can if you go about this in an effective way and get the help you need)
What about the idea of screenwriting is so attractive to you?
You might respond with something like “I want to write a screenplay that elicits an emotional response from the reader - an EFFECTIVE screenplay.”
(I can tell you very few things are as satisfying: a comedy that makes people laugh, a horror that makes people squirm, a drama that makes people cry, etc. It’s THE BEST.)
What are you hoping to achieve as a screenwriter?
Here the goal could be the simplest of all: “to feel the satisfaction of completing the screenplay that’s been in my head for years”. Or simply, “to get paid”.
(And again, if you want to get paid, you’d better start tuning into how to be effective from both the audience's and the industry’s perspective)
Just ask yourself very basic, very simple questions and see what happens. Turn them into goals. Make certain that you answer the questions CLEARLY, CONSICELY, and HONESTLY. It’s the only way you’ll be able to turn them into healthy, achievable goals. As the saying goes …
“If you don’t know where you’re going,
then how will you know when you get there?”
Again, you can’t just wander around and hope you’ll get lucky. So, spend a moment and talk to yourself about what you want and why. Then, write down your goals and place them somewhere visible. Don’t be afraid of goals. You need them. And, more importantly, you deserve to feel satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment when you achieve them.
I hope that I’ve made my point that the only way to achieve your goals is TO BE EFFECTIVE. And to be effective, you need to know exactly what it is you are trying to achieve. They go hand in hand and heavily influence each other, so keep this in mind and regularly revisit your list of goals.
This is why trying to find success in a vacuum is so impossible. If you don’t yet know how the industry works and what it wants from a screenwriter, don’t assume. Don’t fool yourself. Spend time with other people trying to do what you are trying to do. Listen to every professional you have a chance to talk to. But, NEVER PUSH OR BADGER. Always be professional and courteous and always, ALWAYS thank them for their time.
Don’t be a badger!
WARNING:
Never, and I mean NEVER send your scripts to anyone who has not specifically given you permission to do so! Never email your script to random producers or executives or ANYONE unless you have an ongoing relationship with them and they have asked you to - in writing. I could go on and on about why, but I won’t here. Please trust me on this!
This is arguably the biggest mistake a new screenwriter trying to break in can make.(Competitions and open submissions etc. are fine as long as you follow the specific rules and/or guidelines for each)
There are logistical and even LEGAL reasons for this.
SCREENWRITING IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS - PART 4:
Follow First, Then Lead
In the next post, I’ll talk about what I think are some of the best ways to go about finding your own way to success, so stay tuned!
Want to finally complete that screenplay that's haunting you? Then consider a very special "2-4-1" collaboration between two of the most innovative and results-driven screenwriting coaches in the industry as your INCITING INCIDENT!
Read more through the link! https://thescreenplayfactory.com/blog/2-4-1-coaching…
Then reach out and schedule a no-charge, no-pressure, no-selling, no-obligations live consultation to get all the answers you need. Or just to have a friendly conversation about whatever screenwriting-related subjects you want to talk about. It’s just that easy!
jordan@thescreenplayfactory.com
