How many scripts does it take to turn a script reader sour to spec scripts?
I imagine not too long — if you’re patient and forgiving, somewhere in the low 200’s perhaps. Eventually you see the same mistakes repeated over and over again. Your patience wanes. Your forgiveness falters.
I embraced the process when I first started reading scripts — even as an unpaid reader.
I thought, if I pour myself into my reads, and take care to learn from the successes and mistakes (mostly mistakes) I’ll write better material.
It’s tough to keep up the positivity. Script after script, you offer the same notes: show don’t tell; what does your character want?; dialogue feels snappy but where is your story? And these notes are directed towards the good material… never mind the scripts sent by writers who obviously didn’t proof read: glaring typos on page one; lengthy sections of prose; scenes completely omitted explained with the words “insert scene here” to indicate something will eventually “fill in the blank.”
It gets more difficult to be kind. You can’t hold your tongue in your critiques. You lash out — cruelly, at times — if you think the piece warrants it: “Good, I hope their feelings are hurt. They’ll put more care into their work before sending it next time.”
Perhaps some of these mistakes are because of negligence. I think just as often they’re the mistakes of a first-time script writer. And a first-time writer needs to make his first crop of mistakes at some point in his career — you’re just the reader “watching” as he dips his toes. These are people who, if they put in their time and dedicate themselves, could probably create something quite good — it just wasn’t this project or this script. And what a terrible thing it would be to destroy someone’s potential.
Confidence to put material out to the world is difficult to build, but it’s easily crushed.
Which is precisely the temptation at times. To crush egos, to remind people, “you’re not as good as you think you are.” Each time I’m compelled to do so, however, I remember my first script. An assistant whom I interned for offered to read it and give me notes, and I took her up on it.
It’s only now I realize the gravity of the moment. This act was the catalyst that pushed me to show my work to others, to just put it out there. It taught me to stop treating projects like my darlings; that if you’re going to be a professional, you just do your best before casting them out to the world to see who thrives and who dies.
This assistant could have decided she was tired of reading bad scripts. She could have gotten onto her soap box and preached to me about all the beginner mistakes I made that she’s sick of seeing. She could have said, “Stop writing like this. We get it. You love the sound of your own voice.”
She didn’t. Instead she said, “It’s clear you’re a good writer. Here’s what you’re going to work on for your next script..”
Photo Credit: Dmitry Kaminsky
