I am often asked for advice on writing and revising screenplays. The following is a summation of such recent conversations, correspondence, and efforts.

First, sadly, watch your spelling, grammar, punctuation, and format. Yes, fellow writers, this is still near the top of the list. One private individual who recently sent me a screenplay for review/coverage was soon greeted by a gracious heads-up. Starting with the title page (not page 1), I found over 200 errors or “questionables”. I stopped counting on page 83. As I reminded him, “This may be ‘just a screenplay,’ but it is still writing”. Utilize all tools at your disposal – spell-check, etc., and of course never be afraid of re-reading. Becoming your own spell-check is even better. Minor format arguments are eternal. I could offer that you should always use 12 point Courier font, etc., etc., but most of you already know this, and the remainder will argue with me. I’d say about 10% of screenplays I’ve read recently have been free of errors.

Secondly, watch for bad scene description. Most I have read recently has been ineloquent and lacking in cogent visual imagery. Remember, scene description is one of the most important parts of the screenplay. Make the reader see, feel, and experience the action and setting. Put them there. For me, often what pushes a good screenplay into the realm of a great screenplay is the scene description. What works better “A dragonfly lands on a mossy stump” or “A sapphire-like insect alights on the black velvet of a mangrove tree root”. You tell me. Reading imagery-evoking non-fiction helps. (The book Drums Along the Congo by Rory Nugent, a great descriptive writer, inspired my above example.)

Which brings us to dialogue. From its inception to the present date the motion picture has been primarily a visual medium. Never forget this. Some would argue (and perhaps rightfully so) that the form of the screenplay is a miserable conveyor of cinematic information. Lauded filmmakers such as Orson Welles and Sergei Eisenstein usually started a film project with sketches and paintings, not typing. That came later. Ricardo Freda allegedly auditioned his story for the (now considered groundbreaking) Italian modern gothic horror film I Vampiri (1956) via a sound montage he had recorded, not a script. I like watching movies much more than I like reading screenplays. Who doesn’t? If not well written, they can be a tedious, confusing, and painful read. Keep the reader in mind, not just the viewer. I suggest that, every once in a while, you remind yourself of what can be done cinematically without spoken dialogue. To recognize truth one must know deception. To know where one is going, one must know where one has been. True, true. Sit down and (re)take a look at films such as Dziga Vertov’s The Man With A Movie Camera (1929), Benjamin Christensen’s Haxan (1922), Tod Browning’s The Unknown (1926), Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Junior (1924), Fred Niblo’s Hen-Hur (1925), F.W. Murnau’s Der Letzte Mann (1924), or for that matter Jacques Tati’s Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953) or Russell Rouse’s The Thief (1952), or a staggering myriad of other such titles you may or may not be familiar with. Never forget what Hitchcock called the “pure cinema” of the assembly of images. What does dialogue do? What doesn’t it do? What are you trying to do with it? There are great “talky” works (many, of course based on stage plays) such as Twelve Angry Men (1957), Rope (1948), or My Dinner With Andre (1981), but they are hard to pull off and require excellent performances all the way round.

For many people one of the most meaningful lines in the Bible is the simple combination of the two words “Jesus wept”. In Rossellini’s Roma, Citta Aperta (1945) when Anna Magnani sits down on the stairs and confesses “I’m tired”, you believe her. When Marlon Brando’s character in The Wild One (1953) is asked what he is rebelling against his simple, telling answer of “Watcha got?” speaks the proverbial volumes about his character.

Young and/or inexperienced writers are always too “on the nose”. Don’t get straight to the point. In life, most people don’t. It is human nature. Enter through the back door of dialogue sometimes. I’ve heard Steven Soderbergh lament about some of the on-the-nose writing in his film Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). He says he cringes when he hears Peter Gallagher’s character muse about cheating on his wife. Most people aren’t that honest. They lie, or they at least put their spin on things. In Chinatown (1974) when Faye Dunaway’s character has to admit to Jack Nicholson’s J.J. Gittes that she has had a forced incestual relationship with her father she doesn’t say “I have had a forced incestual relationship with my father”. Robert Towne brilliantly and subtly wrote “My father and I… Understand? Or do I have to spell it out for you?”. The dialogue not only tells us what has happened but also the character’s appropriate way of telling us what happened.

Watch films old and new, though this is not the sole answer to your creative problems. Hitchock was self-admittedly “not a film-goer, sorry to say”. This clearly intensified his focus, dissuaded distraction and sense of competition, and distilled his style, but it eventually tended to separate him from his changing audience. So much so, in fact, that in 1967 he forced himself to watch every film that had been produced that year after his falling box-office earnings and the increased harshness of his critics. Welles openly admitted that he liked making films much more than he liked watching them. Robert Mitchum often confessed that he hadn’t even viewed many of the movies he had made quipping, “They paid me to make movies, not watch ‘em”. Don’t forget literary influences (as some recent box office and critical successes continue to remind us), but don’t let yourself be confined to them. Eric Von Stroheim, great as he was, seemed to not adapt literary works so much as expound upon them. And even though some were behind him as a film artist, he was forced out of Hollywood. Of course, if you are going to write an adaptation, know your source material. And even more importantly choose the right source material. Don’t just look at the story, characters, and author, look at the length. Consider the possible cost of production. What is the cost of the film rights, if any?

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, the old adage is still true: write what you know. For instance, if you haven’t been told since grade school that you are funny, if you haven’t made people fall on the floor with your antics, then you might want to think twice about writing a comedy. It stands to reason, doesn’t it? You’d be surprised to hear how many people just don’t take that advice. I’ve read so many “comedies” that haven’t even produced a smile on face my I can’t count them. And, again, a script can often be a bad conveyor of laughs. I’m sure that if I read an episode from the BBC show The Office before it was shot I probably would have said “Well-written. Fairly funny. Not real sure if anyone is going to watch it or not”. It’s the performances that do at least 50% of the work. It’s the same case with Seinfeld, I Love Lucy, or The Honeymooners. Some factors just can’t be determined or imagined. They simply must be played out. Even if they won’t admit it, all the industry types can do (at best) is give a slightly educated guess as to whether a film will do well or not. Few knew what a big hit Love Story (1970) would be or what an egg Cleopatra (1963) would lay. The one thing you can count on is you. If you don’t know your subject, get to know it. Paddy Cheyefsky used to sit in the Russian Tea Room and eavesdrop on society conversations to improve his dialogue skills. It’s hard to be a good writer if you haven’t lived a little. The younger writers in general tend to be less polished, less competent, and more transparent than the older ones. That is simply a fact in my experience. Be ready to fight for your work. Know your work well enough that you can fight for it. If a producer asks you “why does this character say this here?”, don’t answer “I don’t know” or “I felt like writing that”. Say “He/She had to say that at that very moment because…”. And make the answer an honest one. Don’t let your screenplays become a collection of references to other movies or influences of your favorite filmmakers. Take in as much of it as you can, then exhale, forget it all, and write.

Josh Hickman has worked as a screenwriter, script consultant, and script doctor for over 10 years. He was Film Project Coordinator for the 5th Annual Vistas Film Festival, a judge in the 2005 Century City Film Festival Screenplay Competition in Los Angeles, and is presently Associate Producer of the comedy play The Bride Can’t Stop Coughing at The Actor’s Playpen Theater in Hollywood. Contact: hickmanscripts@gmail.com