Hello, my name is Garth, and I was a script reader for the Killer Shorts contest. I’m back again to lecture you all about some writing habits I saw that I’d like to encourage you to avoid. It’s going to be really condescending and obnoxious! Woo-hoo!!!!!!
I kid, of course. Many of you probably found your way to this article because you want to know why you didn’t advance further in the competition. Indeed, of the 1551(!) entries this year, I personally read 300 of them. Rounded up, that’s about 20%, and I may have been the reason you didn’t get selected. It may not seem like it, but I took that responsibility seriously. Or at the very least, I’m more than intimate with the particular disappointment you may be feeling, as I’ve been rejected many times myself. You have my sympathy and my respect.
So I’m here to help! Or at the very least, I’m here to offer you something adjacent to help with the something adjacent to wisdom I gained from reading all these scripts. Of course, I can just give you the usual stuff. Check for typos and be original and all that good shit you should already know. But the trends I saw this year were more specific and troubling, and I think it’ll be more useful if you knew about those instead. So let’s just get to it!
(A Lack Of) Clarity
Last year, the most prevalent issue I saw was a formula I boringly called Punchline Scripts. These were horror scripts in which the protagonist unknowingly enters a dangerous situation, slowly realizes something spooky’s going on, and then gets killed by the source of said danger right at the end of the script. Dude enters a cave, sees a bunch of bones, then gets killed by a monster. That kind of thing. (If that example left you unsatisfied, you now know why Punchline Scripts are an issue.)
I still ran into this formula, but not nearly to the extent that I did last year. That’s good! However, the issue I ran into the most this year is far worse. That’s bad! On top of that, it’s a more nebulous issue that’s hard to pin down with much specificity for the sake of a blog post intended to be helpful for screenwriters. That’s also bad!
The issue I ran into the most this year was clarity, or more specifically, the lack of it. A lack of clarity when it came to scene descriptions. Or in describing scenes with heavy amounts of action. Or in exposition and explaining the rules governing supernatural elements. Any potential clarity issue you could run into, I ran into it. And just to be clear, I’m not talking about story elements that are left intentionally ambiguous. I’m talking about the fundamental aspects of a script that need to be communicated clearly in order for your audience to feel what you intend them to feel.
I wish this was a more fun topic to talk about. But it’s not. It’s just frustrating.
Clarity issues stop my job, or any reader’s job, from being easy. Half of my duty was to accurately summarize each script I read, which meant that I had to understand them. So when I ran into scripts with clarity issues, it wasn’t uncommon for me to reread scenes over and over again, or even whole scripts. If I had to do that, I sure as hell was loud about it in my coverage.
There’s much I want to do with my time. Watch movies. Work on my own scripts. Blow off working on my scripts to go watch Karen videos. I certainly don’t want to spend it rereading your work over and over again just so I can understand it.
(Sidenote: The number of times I wrote “clarity issues” in my write-ups assuredly annoyed the absolute shit out of our wonderful contest director, so keep in mind that you’re not only alienating me, but you’re making me alienate Alison as well. If I’m going to alienate Alison, it’ll be because of my Moulin Rouge! opinions, not because I had to write “clarity issues” in my coverage again, damnit!)
Clarity issues also aren’t fun to talk about because there isn’t a particularly clever solution that will make me sound like I have any business giving you screenwriting advice. There is no formula to be aware of here. Just procedure. You simply have to get feedback.
Bother your friends about reading your script. Bother your family members. Go to the Script Hive Discord and get help in the feedback channel. Tell them to be as honest as possible, but don’t tell them much beyond what it’s about. Be persistent about getting feedback. You may be worried about annoying your friends and loved ones, but you chose screenwriting as your passion, so chances are they already find you weird and off-putting anyway.
You see the story in your head. It’s very clear in there. But you need to make sure that everyone sees what you see.
Do Not Begin Your Script By Writing a Gigantic Paragraph of Description
I realize this one may sound too specific to actually be helpful. But if I had to guess the rough percentage of scripts I read that began with a giant ten-plus line paragraph of description, I would guess anywhere between 35 to 45%.
I encountered this problem so much, in fact, that I seriously began to wonder whether or not there was some shift in screenwriting pedagogy that I was unaware of, and I spent an embarrassing amount of time scouring subreddits and comment sections trying to figure out if this was the new trend. (Rest assured that it’s not.)
It may be easy to dismiss this pattern as simple amateurism. That many writers did this because they didn’t know better, and instead, I should be writing about something that may be a little more obviously informative. But it’s an issue that bothers me, like a Karen falsely accusing someone of stealing a phone.
The weird thing about this particular trend, besides the frequency of it, was the inconsistency. Sometimes, it was only the opening paragraph that was super long while everything else looked professional. Sometimes I’d get a super long opening paragraph, then a few normal pages, then another super long paragraph. Yet, curiously enough, I never got a script that was only long descriptions. Just one or the other.
This, to me, does not scream amateurism. Instead, I think, it’s an effort to stand out. To convey a certain tone or to establish voice or to better communicate to the audience the general vibe of a setting. You’ve read about many haunted houses in many horror scripts, but this one’s different, and I’m going to convey how with a big paragraph explaining how the light shines through the shutters onto a bed. Something like that.
There are many creatively and intellectually justified reasons why one may choose to begin their script with a big ol’ paragraph of description. Or at the very least, I think the intent is pure. It is still, however, a waste of your time.
An analogy: My dad has a neighbor who’s obsessed with maintaining his front lawn. And by “obsessed,” I mean that if a single leaf falls on his yard, he will go outside, get rid of it, then head back into his house. This is despite the fact that they live in a typical east coast forest biome with heavy leaf fall in autumn, and despite the fact that they live in the kind of suburban neighborhood where all the houses look more or less the same. The only thing this man is accomplishing with all the time he puts into making sure not a single leaf touches his lawn is that his house now looks like all the other houses.
It’s a lot of effort that accomplishes very little.
A similar amount of effort has clearly gone into constructing these paragraphs. Again, I understand what these descriptions are trying to accomplish. However, my job is to evaluate your work based on your abilities to tell a story, not to describe one. You may be able to evoke whatever it is that you want to evoke with your prose, but evocation is not as important as emotional resonance. A poor story told well is still a poor story.
Really, the bigger lesson here is to use your time wisely. There are many tricks you can use to stand out. But none of them will ever be as effective as simply telling a good story.
The No Dialogue Dilemma
This is an interesting one as the problem here might not be on you guys. It probably is. But it might not be.
You could argue that this is an issue where typical writer execution failure is matched by reader incompetence. Or to put it more simply, the problem here might be that I’m lazy and bad at my job. (A very real possibility!) I also need to be careful with my phrasing here. It’s not that you should never write scripts that feature no dialogue. It’s that you should be very careful should you choose to do so.
Let’s back up a bit. I read a lot of scripts that feature either no dialogue or next to no dialogue. It didn’t really go well for either of us. (Also, for the rest of this article, when I talk about dialogue free scripts, assume that I’m also talking about scripts that only have a line or two or feature next to no dialogue.)
So where does my incompetency end and this being an actual problem begin? Well, let’s get the obvious point out of the way first: Film is a visual art form, and information should be communicated as such when possible. Purely visual scripts are a perfectly legitimate way of expressing yourself through this medium. That, however, was not the thought that ran through my mind when I scrolled through a script and saw no dialogue. The actual thought was, “Fuck, it’s going to take longer to read this script. Now I have to wait to rewatch that video of the antimask dude in Costco who gets water dunked on him. Also, antimask videos should be thought of as a sub-genre of Karen videos.” These are my exact thoughts.
I do, however, have legitimate reasons to be apprehensive, none of which have anything to do with the fact that I hate working and being productive.
For starters, there’s our old friend clarity. When you rid yourself of the ability to have a character explain an important aspect of your story, you are then relying on your ability to communicate clearly with just your scene descriptions. As we’ve already covered, this doesn’t always work out. Scenes reliant on intense action or minute details can get muddy, and if this happens early on, you run the risk of the rest of your script being a frustrating slog.
But there’s also a bigger issue at play. I did read a cleanly written dialogue free script or two where I understood everything that was going on. I did not, however, read a script where the decision to not include dialogue felt fully justified. All of these scripts featured at least one scene where verbal communication would be natural or there was a scenario where the script goes needlessly far out of its way to not include dialogue. At best, it was distracting and contrived. At worst, it was outright bothersome.
Once again, I need to be careful with what I’m saying here because I’m sure a great dialogue free script exists. Or at the very least, such a script could exist. However, when we go for devices like this, we mainly focus on the best possible outcome, and rarely do we think about what happens when what we’re going for doesn’t work. Maybe we should.
When an audience looks at the screen, chances are that they’re looking at human beings, and human beings mainly communicate via the spoken word. So again, it’s not “don’t write a script with no dialogue.” Just be aware of the fact that you’re giving yourself a higher bar to clear, and that you might not clear it.
Please Write More Corporate Horror
Last year, I pleaded to you all to write more horror comedy. This year, I’m sad to say that I didn’t get as much horror comedy as I wanted, but I contribute that mostly to the vast number of submissions we got. I’m sure plenty of people submitted horror comedy scripts, and I’m sure they were great!
Luckily for you all, I have transported myself in my head to a place where I got what I wanted last year and it didn’t make me happy. (As per usual. Shout out to my fear of therapy.) So now I’ll ask for something else! In fact, I hereby declare that we’re starting a new tradition in which I advocate for a positive trend I’d like to see more of, and this year, that trend is corporate horror. Pretty please, write more corporate horror.
By “corporate horror,” I mean horror scripts that take place in the corporate world, or generally in a place of business that doesn’t involve much physical labor or service to the public. I’m talking about horror set in cubicle farms or large corporate edifices or call centers or (nowadays) work-from-home setups. Horror, generally speaking, about the terror of employment.
First of all, corporate horror is an easy way to inject your script with a little bit of substance. The structure of employment, and the nature of how offices and jobs operate in most of the world, is a mechanism of capitalism. As a result, simply setting your horror movie in a corporate environment counts as critique. Even if your corporate horror script is simply a dumb romp about the copy machine growing teeth and attacking people, that machine exists to financially benefit the company in one way or another, and now it’s attacking the workers. Congratulations, you just criticized capitalism! Good job, comrade!
Second of all, and this may just be my taste, but even if the capitalism subtext does nothing for you, something about corporate horror just kind of works on a visceral level. The claustrophobia of many office environments. The stale air and predictable routines. The feeling of time moving slowly in a space without the slightest hint of aesthetic or humanity. There’s just something about it that strikes me as slightly unreal. Something inhuman. A general sense that this is not how it’s supposed to be. Prime stuff for horror.
Or if you just want to write dumb fun, there are plenty of routes to go in that direction as well. The murderous fax machine. A nosy office mate who’s always in everybody’s shit who’s actually up to something nefarious. The boss who’s actually a vampire. If your corporate horror story takes place in certain service industries, perhaps a killer Karen can blow in and wreak havoc, like the Karen who got pushed on her ass for throwing her pizza at the Pizza Hut manager. (Note to any writers reading this: I demand to see a noticeable uptick in Karen horror next year.)
Corporate horror is, unfortunately, a brand of horror that many people can probably relate to in one way or another. This includes readers for script competitions. It is, perhaps, something you may want to lean into.
I don’t know why I’m being subtle here, write some fucking corporate horror.
Actually Write a Short Script (Or: Gimmicks Don’t Work)
It’s exceedingly obvious when you’ve taken the teaser from your feature script and submitted it as your short.
Usually, there’s a lot of setup that doesn’t have any payoff, mainly in the mythology department. It’s not just that the monster comes out and kills everyone. It’s that a lot of time is spent establishing lore that a protagonist is clearly meant to discover later, then the monster attacks, leaving all that lore just hanging out in the ether. Or maybe it’s the kind of teaser that emphasizes a character that doesn’t die at the end, and we spend a lot of time getting to know them before something happens and they make a decision before the short ends. Johnny’s an alcoholic, then something kills his AA sponsor. “I better stop drinking so I can find out what did this.” Something like that.
It’s also exceedingly obvious when you’ve shortened your pilot script, or you just took an act or two and submitted that as your short.
In this case, there’s the aforementioned character development and maybe the rules for the supernatural element get explained. But there’s also a certain amount of world building that ultimately doesn’t get to go anywhere or evolve before the script ends. Perhaps our protagonist falls in with a secret government task force that fights the paranormal. Or maybe the protagonist finds a secret society or a portal to another world or something like that. Whatever the case may be, the protagonist enters an unfamiliar world or situation, which is what good TV pilots do. But rather than tease out a larger story, they end.
We could just end it there. “Don’t turn in a fragment of a bigger script” is sound enough advice. Even in the hypothetical situation where I misdiagnosed a script that wasn’t a feature teaser or a reduced version of a pilot or anything in between, “Be aware of when your script is better suited for a larger format than a short” is also advice worth giving and taking. However, there’s a larger pattern I’d like to point out.
Turning in a teaser, turning in a reduced pilot, beginning with too much description as a ploy to demonstrate voice, contriving reasons to not include dialogue when there would be otherwise. (All of which contribute, one way or another, to the greater issue of clarity.) When used effectively, you may get a good short using one or more of these gimmicks. But nine times out of ten, they are just that. Gimmicks. Tricks. Distractions from the best way to stand out, which is simply to tell an effective story. Easy, right?
I don’t want this to sound like I’m saying you should change the way you write or that you’re wrong if you want to write a script with no dialogue or anything like that. “Effective story” could mean just about anything depending on who’s doing the writing and who’s doing the reading. On top of that, at least for this competition, you’ve got twenty-five pages. That’s not a lot to work with, and it may be tempting to break the glass and reach for a gimmick. But don’t do it.
For us readers, these gimmicks are frustrating and distracting. There’s a brief moment where we think these tricks may be leading somewhere, but rarely does this actually occur. In case you’re wondering what that feels like, there’s a reason I linked to all those Karen videos. Yes, I thought it would be funny for whatever reason, and you may have thought this Karen joke was leading somewhere. That perhaps I was going to tie it to a grander point or make some sort of comparison. But it isn’t and I wasn’t. I did it to be frustrating and distracting. (See what I did there?)
All that said, there’s good news. It’s not just that you shouldn’t be using these tricks. It’s that you don’t have to! This article is mainly focused on the negatives. But I read so many scripts, and I know that there’s so much talent in you guys. You don’t need a device that makes you seem clever because you already are. You just need to put the work in and be genuine. It may work out or it may not. But it will be worth it.
A Few Quick Closing Points
- Please stop writing in camera movements. I understand the impulse, but they just take up room, feed into a lot of clarity issues, and they’re annoying.
- Also stop inserting “CUT TO” between each scene.
- On a related note, do not put in obnoxious proof of ownership into your script. That means no watermarks or author’s notes or production company credits or anything like that. We’re supposed to be reading the entries anonymously, but if I see something that identifies you, I’m looking you up. You don’t want that. Plus it just looks like you’re trying too hard. (I’ll personally give a pass to the Celtx footer because I get that some people need to use free software. But not everyone may agree with me.)
- I can tell when you go non-linear in order to hide that fact that you didn’t have as much story as you think you did. Again, gimmicks don’t work.
- A lot of you love spoiling the cannibalism reveal in your script. Specifically, you love including a terrible cannibalism related turn of phrase in your logline or pun in the title. Honestly, I’m on the fence about this one. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was actually pretty funny.
- Great job this year, everyone! I realize some of you will read this and feel down on yourselves for running afoul of something I said not to do. But do not despair. Take some time and then get back to it. You will do better next time. I promise.
Featured Image by Ieva Berzina.
Stay tuned for the Top 10 Finalist announcements on March 14, 2022.
