Tom Salinsky

Many scriptreaders, including the BBC’s Writers Room, have a policy, either acknowledged or covert, of judging a script on its first ten pages. Is this accurate or is it simply a high-percentage early cut policy? Can a script be boring or incomprehensible in the first ten pages and then improve massively? Or is writing any ten pages of nonsense reason enough to reject a script?

Today, I have a script to review, and to put this to the test, I am going to record my thoughts page-by-page. Then you, and I, will be able to see if the die is cast by page ten or whether subsequent pages change my mind. I will not discuss any of the details of the script – they remain between me and the author.

First impressions – script is properly presented, and shows every sign of not having been scrawled by an outpatient (not always the case). There are a couple of minor infelicities, both the product of over-pedantry rather than lack of care. Scripts which are not properly formatted will go in the bins of some readers, unread. The script is too long at 125 pages however, especially for a comedy. Writers should aim for 90, and no more than 105. You may not think these rules are meaningful, but since they are subscribed to by others, you should at least be aware of them. PREDICTION: Script will be a little bloated.

Page 1 – opening action line is all camera instructions and no atmosphere. It’s weird that action lines are so important, since directors may very well ignore them and no audience for your movie will ever read them, but a spec screenplay is for reading not watching, and so any opportunity to say to the reader “This is who I am, this is my voice,” should be grabbed with both hands. Pedantically choreographing the camera is not telling the story. Flat, sparse action lines written in telegraphease don’t create a world. These action lines suggest that the writer has not read any other modern screenplays, which is a small black mark against them. This page also contains a number of typographical errors and some overwritten dialogue. The introduction of the characters is not clear and nor is the setting. PREDICTION: This screenplay will include a number of familiar romantic comedy tropes, but no recognisably human characters, nor any really memorable moments. The characters will not come to life in the dialogue and the writer will not create a consistent and truthful world for their story, nor will their intentions always come across with clarity and style.

Page 2 – Our leading character is being introduced to us via voice-over and flashback which is very inelegant. This smacks of first-draft – which is fine, but each reader only gets to read your material for the first time once. Never send anything out in to the world which you aren’t happy with, except in emergencies or to very trusted readers. This whole page is “tell don’t show”. The characters tell us about their relationship by talking about their relationship, and then the leading man tells us again by putting this flashback in context through voice-over. The overall effect is like hearing a story third-hand rather than being immersed in it. Openings are tough. You want to enter the story late in order to get to the good stuff sooner rather than later, but you also want to take sufficient time to provide a context for the excitement which is to come. Tellingly, I don’t at the moment know how to begin my synopsis for the report, since it’s not at all clear to me what the real situation is here. PREDICTION: The story will continue to be marred by inelegant construction.

Page 3 – brings us another persistent formatting error, and a cliche situation. Almost all the screenplays I’ve reviewed so far make the mistake of hewing too closely to an established template, or giving the reader nothing familiar at all to hang on to. Most stories – and this is also the easiest route as well as the most common – portray a single unexpected event happening in a familar world. This is true across all genres. An ordinary day in the ordinary life of a divorced New York cop becomes extraordinary when criminals take over his ex-wife’s place of work. An ordinary day in the ordinary life of photographer recovering from an injury becomes extraordinary when he thinks he has witnessed a murder. An ordinary career of an ordinary actor becomes extraordinary when he takes the risky step of dressing in women’s clothing to get a part. And so on. But that doesn’t mean you get to use Die Hard, Rear Window or Tootsie as a template. We need to see something of you on the page. Here, my first prediction is already being fulfilled – this is another version of an already successful movie, rather than an original piece of work with a unique voice.

On this page we also have a sudden cut to a new location and set of characters which is another sign of this being a first-draft. “I need to introduce the reader to Alex and Barry and Caroline and Daisy,” thinks the writer and bashes out those four scenes. But each scene needs to be a situation in its own right, and ideally, the Alex scene should make us curious about Barry, or herald his arrival, so that a feeling of momentum is maintained. PREDICTION – a slightly eccentric one – this choppy quality won’t be maintained, and the script will develop the necessary momentum, but that doesn’t make the opening any better.

Pages 4-6 – still choppy. We’ve lurched into the future, and still not shaken off the voice-over. These three pages cover enough events to fill a typical romantic comedy. Boy meets girl, boy gets to know girl, boy overcomes his fears, they move in together, they agree to marry. At this stage I have no idea where this story is going. I do know it’s his story – she has only had one line of dialogue so far. His ex and his parents have had more!! It’s a persistent weakness of romantic comedies that leading men are complex, conflicted and amusing characters and leading women are sparkly prizes to be won, but of no more interest or depth than that. PREDICTION: He will do all the changing and get all the laughs, she will be a cipher.

Page 7 – another collection of new characters, in another new situation, but no reason for me to care about any of them, or even be interested in who they are.

Pages 8-10 – aha! I think the plot has shown up at last, but this twist is more confusing than anything else. More new characters keep showing up and our leading lady has taken a course of action which is totally unmotivated by anything which has gone before. PREDICTION – story will never find a strong, clear hook. Events will be confusing and disjointed. Dialogue will not improve.

That’s where I’m leaving this for now. Join me back here for page 125 and I’ll let you know how many of my predictions come true.

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Well, that was quite a long read. Unfortunately, pretty much all my worst fears were confirmed. As well as the problems mentioned above, the screenplay lurches from event to event with no structure and no clarity, is much too long,  features many supporting characters who contribute nothing to the plot, and a resolution which leaves many questions unanswered. I could easily have stopped reading after 10 pages and I would have diagnosed all the major problems with this script. But that’s not what I’m paid for – now to write the full report and look for ways to be encouraging and constructive.

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If you want me or one of the other Script Surgeons to read your script and send you a detailed report on what works and what doesn’t then we are currently offering this service for just £50 with a guaranteed seven-day turnaround. Send your script in today.

What makes people go to the movies? Briefly: stars, spectacle and story. If your movie stars Jim Carrey or Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts, a certain number of people will turn out to see it come what may. There are also (a few) star directors like Steven Spielberg or James Cameron, and star “properties” like Batman or Harry Potter. Put that name or that face or that logo on the poster and you’ve already sold your first million tickets.

Next comes spectacle. If you can promise a rollercoaster ride, if you can promise jawdropping images, if you can dazzle your audience, you’ll pack ‘em in. Spectacle has meant different things in different eras: from Fred Astaire’s flashing feet, to the stunts and carchases of the 60s and 70s, to the CGI wonders of the 90s, and now it means Bourne-style “realism” more often than not. Advertising these things is not quite so easy, but you can certainly depict them on posters and they make good clips for TV shows and wonderful trailers.

Lastly comes story. A movie lacking stars and low on spectacle may nevertheless find an audience if the story is compelling – but how do you sell the story? You can’t give all the details away, so you have to just give a piece of it and hope that will be enough. The bigger a piece you have to give, the harder it is to communicate that simply and easily in the marketing. And that’s why High Concept is such a winner. High Concept means that your basic story idea can be a) summed up in a single short sentence, b) sounds exciting and c) has never been done before. High concept means a movie with no stars and no spectacle can still be sold on its story, and a movie with stars and/or spectacle has a third marketing route to help ensure that all that money spent on stars and spectacle won’t be wasted.

So, it’s easy to see why high concept is the darling of the money guys, and a millstone around the neck of a struggling screenwriter. I want to tell this intricate, complicated, heartfelt, truthful moving story. I don’t want it reduced to half-a-dozen snappy words. Well, maybe you should.

Conventional screenwriting wisdom breaks screen stories into three acts, and my feeling is that this is nothing more than reflecting an innate quality of stories, which in turn reflects an innate way in which human beings process information. A story needs a beginning, a middle and an end. It needs a set-up, a crisis and a resolution. The most prescriptive screenwriting manuals will give you page count targets for these things, and again they generally make sense for typical stories. If your screenplay is 120 pages and it takes you a lot more than 30 pages to set your story up, your story is all set-up and no action. If your major climax comes more than about 15 pages before the end, your story will feel like it fizzles out.

So, if you have an idea for a story, very often you know how to start it, so those first 20-30 pages can almost write themselves. And either you know how the story will end, or you know you won’t know how it ends until you get there, so in either case there’s no point worrying about those last 10-20 pages. Act one – no problem. Act three – no problems. It’s the 90 odd pages of act two that come in between, that’s your problem.

And that’s the real value of high concept.

A high concept idea gives you act two.

Let’s briefly compare two well-known supposedly high concept films: Tootsie and Indecent Proposal. Both films made money, because both were sold on their starpower and their high concept, but Tootsie made quite a lot more (adjusted for inflation) and was a critical success, whereas Indecent Proposal was critically derided and is now largely forgotten.

Let’s look at their high concept pitches. Tootsie: An actor with a reputation for being difficult to work with dresses up as a woman to land a role. Indecent Proposal: A billionaire offers a married couple a million dollars for one night spent with the wife. Do each of these fulfil the criteria outlined above? Both can be summed up in a single sentence. Both sound exciting, variously bringing with them secrecy, ambition, sex, money and power. And both are reasonably unique; if anything, Indecent Proposal is fresher, since cross-dressing comedies have long existed.

What then is the difference? The difference is that the Tootsie high concept gives you act two. But the high concept in Indecent Proposal isn’t really a high concept at all. It’s a high set up. When you put the face or name of big stars on the poster, you’re promising exciting performances. When you advertise the spectacle of your movie, you’re promising exciting visuals. When you use your high concept to sell your movie, you’re promising exciting situations. What exciting situations are you promised by the logline of Indecent Proposal? None. It’s a single moral dilemma, which can only really be resolved in one way or the movie really would die.

So, it plods through an interminably long act one, finally getting Demi Moore on board Robert Redford’s yacht after an awful lot of talking, and then finally getting them into bed together (although we don’t actually see this). And then the consequences of this are… not much. Demi Moore wavers rather pathetically between Harrelson and Redford, there’s some dull talk about foreclosures, finally Harrelson gives away the million bucks and Moore comes back to him. The story lacks structure and feels arbitrary.

Now, look at Tootsie. This too spends a while getting Hoffman to the point where shaving his legs and putting on a dress is a viable option, and is working towards the moment when his true identity will be revealed (at which point the film will be over) but once she/he lands the part, the set-up itself gives you the following situations…

·         Sustaining the charade in the dressing rooms

·         Trying to pursue a romance with another actress who doesn’t know he’s really a man

·         Dealing with the advances of sexist men

·         Dealing with the sincere advances of genuinely nice men

·         Seeing the world from a female perspective and questioning his own behaviour towards women

The high concept gives you the whole of act two, which is what a high concept should do for a screenwriter. If it helps someone else later down the line to sell your screenplay, or even – glory be! – gets audiences to come and see your movie, great. But as a screenwriter, value those ideas which give you act two. Because act two is a bitch.

Ask yourself of each sequence: could this sequence exist in any other movie? When you have an idea for a movie, ask yourself: what unique sequences does this idea give me? If the answers are “no” and “lots”, you may be on to a winner.

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If you want me or one of the other Script Surgeons to read your script and send you a detailed report on what works and what doesn’t then we are currently offering this service for just £50 with a guaranteed seven-day turnaround. Send your script in today.