So it’s submissions week here at LondonSWF and wow! All kinds of stories, genres and characters have been flashing before my eyes so I reckon I’m getting divorced somewhere in space right now, whilst looking for my lost child, staging a revolution AND harvesting DNA from my long-long-long-long-lost mutant grandmother (who may also be younger than me). The life of a script reader, hey!
Since I’ve more or less made it through the Actors’ Table Read screenplays now (you’ll hear soon, HONEST guvs!), I thought I’d offer some random thoughts I noted down as I was reading:
1) First up, the DULL stuff: spelling, grammar and punctuation. The LEAST a writer can do is ensure s/he’s not slipping up on the basics like spelling, grammar and punctuation but I’d wager about 50% did to some degree, with roughly 10-15% doing it consistently. As ever, apostrophe confusion and mixed tenses were the main two problems, with “general bad spelling” trailing a close third. Look, no (good) script reader is heartless! We understand typos and errors may happen here and there, which is NEVER a problem. What’s more, as a trained teacher, I know issues like dyslexia can affect highly creative people like writers. But every one of us has to identify what our problem areas are in order to tackle them, so if this issue is one of yours, you MUST find the resources and strategies to deal with it. Here’s a post (plus stacks of resources and strategies!) to help you.
2) Parentheticals were EVERYWHERE. The best screenplays in the ATR let the dialogue literally speak for itself, using parentheticals ONLY if a line’s meaning was ambiguous; in comparison however, lots of the scripts had many parentheticals, with several having one for EVERY SINGLE LINE. Noooooooo! Dudes, this is an ACTORS’ table read: you need to allow their response to your material – that’s the point. Here’s 5 Reasons Parentheticals Are Useless.
3) Titles. I saw some really good titles this year; some genuinely interesting ones that piqued my interest in the stories behind them. I can’t even remember the last time this happened to me in a script call (really!), so this was noted down during my initial sift. Here’s how to pick the WRONG title.
4) A good writer has his or her own VOICE. As ever, I was really pleased to see some of “the usual suspects” in the spec pile and by that I don’t mean Kevin Spacey, but some of the Bang2writers … Strikingly however, several of them I knew even before I’d double-checked their names. Why? ‘Cos they’re showcasing their “writer’s voices” effectively. Not sure what this means? Then find out in this post.
5) Scene description is scene ACTION. And probably the BIGGEST issue in the ATR pile: scene description. Unsurprisingly, most of the sequences submitted were dialogue heavy, being an actor’s table read and actors LURVE dialogue! Also time is at a premium at the festival, so it makes zero sense to submit a sequence without a good chunk of dialogue in it. However, as ever, the scene description that *is* in a lot of the sequences are full of what I call FALSE MOVEMENT — moving eyebrows, elbows, hands on hips — YAWNSOME x ten! Remember, you’re writing a SCREENplay (not a screenPLAY!), so be sure of getting rid of the false movement. For more, check out 3 Tips For Getting Rid Of Static Scenes, plus 10 Ways To Revitalise Your Scene Description.
I love that LondonSWF does an Actor’s Table Read now: any writer (or other industry pro, for that matter) knows the vital role actors’ response to one’s material plays in developing a screenplay’s story and characterisation for the better. If you’re reading this and haven’t ever heard your own spec screenplay spoken aloud – by professional actors or not – here’s a great post from Nidhi Gupta about putting on your OWN rehearsed reading. Enjoy!
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Posted by a member of the London Screenwriters’ Festival team.
