The year of the Lion & the Gazelle is upon us. Well it’s a upon me. And as such, I’m wearing my writer’s hat these days and already neck-deep in the script (re)writing process. Unlike anything I’ve done previously, what this means is my drafts will be going out to a bunch of people who will all likely have an impactful opinion on it. My writing is good – I know, because I write it – so I’m not worried about opinions. Unfortunately however, this protective arrogance cannot shield me from the lack of control I have over one thing: How people read my script.<\/p>\n
Getting someone to read your script is a pretty big deal, whether it’s a producer or your best friend. I think first-time writers have a false sense of how hard this is to do. Sure, your mom wants to read your script, but all those people who say “oh, you’re a writer? Cool, I’d love to read your script!” they don’t actually want to read your script. They just don’t know it yet. Your script is long, it’s formatted in a way that they don’t understand, Dancing With the Stars<\/em> is on at 9… So believe me, getting someone to read your script is pretty tough. And getting someone to read your script properly is next to impossible.<\/p>\n I haven’t been doing this long, granted, but I’ve been doing it long enough to know that if I’m getting odd questions about continuity or lack of foreshadowing (that I know is there) from a reader there’s usually one reason for it: They didn’t read the script properly.<\/p>\n Properly, to moi, means the following:<\/p>\n You have to read a script the same way you watch a film: In one sitting. It’s not a Popular Mechanics <\/em>article, you can’t just pick it up every time you sit down on the bowl. It’s not a novel, layered with detail and deep internal character building that you can ingest in little morsels every night before bed. It is the blueprint to a movie. Therefore, I declare!: That a screenplay must be read when you are fully awake, preferably in the morning. It must be read from a comfortable chair in a room no warmer than 21 degrees Celsius. All phones must be turned off. If you must eat or drink during the reading this food and beverage must be prepared in advance and be non-alcoholic. For best results you must only read a maximum of two scripts a day. Also, in this fantasy the sky is orange and people ride flying carpets to work.<\/p>\n All I’m saying is the entertainment industry completely sucks the instinctive artistry out of creative writing through the application of a regimented drafting process wrought with two-centsing notes from everybody and their dog so… The very least the lowly writer can demand in return is that a standard for reading be applied to their scripts.<\/p>\n Flying carpets to work…<\/p>\n Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A plea to those on the other side of the page and other fanciful wishes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-from-the-studio","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylergibb.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}