I’m pleased to welcome scriptwriter, producer and author Angela Elliott back to The Writing Desk to answer some questions I’ve wondered about: Could my book ever be made into a film/movie, is it worth writing a ‘treatment’, and what do I need to know?
Here’s the thing: treatments these days aren’t like they used to be. Once upon a time when you sent a script to a producer they’d ask for the treatment. That’s because most producers were not creatives, they were money men (they still are to a large extent) and because scripts are notoriously hard to read, even when you’ve got one that is perfectly formatted, and a brilliant story, fabulously told. A treatment is simply the script without the dialogue and with a little more storytelling and less instruction.
So, roll back from this for a moment. A script is meant to be an instruction manual to the director and actors. It gives action, dialogue and, in a first draft script, some camera shots but definitely not all. What you do not want to do with a first draft script is direct the film. A shooting script is a whole different thing. Let’s be clear, every draft you, as the originator, writes is a first draft until it’s sold and the director starts to make official changes to it.
A treatment is a synopsis, but for a film instead of a book, and it should be easier to read than a script because all those nasty scene headings and dialogue and lumps and bumps are smoothed out. At least, that’s what it used to be. These days you can get away without a treatment as long as you have a really good script and a one/two page outline that includes a log line and brief overview.
No one has time any more to wade through a treatment. What they will do is scan your outline, read the first couple of pages of script and if it’s formatted correctly and the idea paints a picture, they may read on. If it doesn’t then at best you’ll get a ‘I can’t really see this’ or ‘it’s not for us’ message, and at worst you’ll get no reply at all.
What is the best way to find the right initial point of contact to discuss a potential script?
In the USA scriptwriters have managers and agents, with agents focused on contracts. In the UK agents do the job of both manager and agent. So, depending on where you are you should try to get an agent. Easier said than done. Many scriptwriters submit to places such as the ‘Blacklist’ https://blcklst.com/ It’s USA based and you get a script assessment. You can get picked up by managers there. However, there’s no telling who is doing the feedback and you’re putting your script online for all to read and potentially take. There are others similar to this, and you can take part in contests to get noticed. You will have to do some research to find them.
All that said, I’d still say that for a UK based scriptwriter the best way to get noticed is to research the production companies making your kind of project and submit direct to them.
You can also write a short (10 to 15 minutes) either as a stand-alone or as a proof of concept for a bigger project. You can then find people you know to make that short and enter it into various short film contests to get yourself known. Another route in is to do a course such as those run by Raindance, here in the UK. There are loads of other, similar film schools and courses in the States. Any of these courses give you entry level contacts and furnish you with more knowledge.
It is the hardest thing in the world to find producers with a high enough profile who will work with you and make things happen. It’s dead easy to find producers either at the start of their career or who have never really produced anything of note. Don’t go with the first person that comes along and says they want to make your film. You need to know what else they’ve made, who they know, who they can bring to the party. You want someone with a good reputation, that is unless you are writing something really low budget that you want to produce/direct yourself. In other words, if you’re an auteur rather than a scriptwriter; if you see yourself as someone who writes, directs, acts, and edits your own film, then go do it all. Otherwise, look to work with the best you can find who believes in you.
The importance of making connections is invaluable. It’s also often organic rather than forced. My way into the business happened because 33 years ago my then mother-in-law saw a piece in a local Harrogate newspaper by an actor who was in Emmerdale. Stewart Bevan had directed theatre, and his first film was with Sidney Poitier in To Sir With Love. Channel 4 in the UK was brand new and they wanted short films. Stewart advertised for people to come forward and I wrote a ten-minute script and sent it to him. He loved it, submitted it to C4 and it was shortlisted. Although it didn’t get made Stewart taught me script formatting and introduced me to a producer he knew. That producer had been Stanley Kubrick’s assistant on Barry Lyndon. He introduced me to director Lewis Gilbert’s son John. Stewart also made introductions to Stephen Walters and Stephen to Bernie Williams, who made Top Gun and Bowfinger, Charlotte’s Web and a whole heap of others. Bernie helped me some more and got my scripts to Marlon Brando (who promptly died, but that’s another story). I spent years and years developing contacts and learning my craft. It doesn’t happen overnight. You have to put in the work and you have to know who to trust and who to avoid. This is something you learn along the way.
If you’re young and fresh out of film school, then you’ve got one up on me because I didn’t study either film or creative writing; I did Fine Art. Studying art though trains you in attention to detail, and God (or the Devil, depending on your proclivity) is in the details. If you’re a good novelist you’ll only make a good scriptwriter if you know what to junk and what to keep, and you allow your ability at prose to flow without it bogging down the instructive nature of a script.
In other words: don’t overwrite. A good example of overwriting the action in a script might be something like: ‘He walked to the door and opened it’, when all that’s needed is ‘He exits’. Most producers look at format as a way of gauging if you know what you’re doing. Getting format right is vitally important. Many novices write scripts that are formatted more or less correctly, but are low on incidental formatting, such as sounds in caps and transitions, or even breaks in paragraphs or info on what’s happening in the background. I’ve seen some where the characters are not described. Try and get formatting right.
As far as treatments are concerned, some write them before the script and some after. I’d say don’t write a full treatment, which can run to many pages, unless you’re asked specifically for one. Read as many first draft scripts as you can. You can find them online. Watch out for those which are written post edit. They aren’t a first draft. One of the best scripts I’ve ever read is Wes Craven’s first Nightmare on Elm Street, but the first John Wicks script is pretty good too. I’m not talking film here; I’m talking script; the best script for formatting and ease of storytelling.
What is your view of the advice from the BBC Writer's room?
The BBC have a very proscribed way of doing things. There are two formats for scriptwriting: TV and film. TV format is an old format that writes down half the page vertically in caps and gives you 30 seconds of screen time per page. Film format gives you 1 minute per page which is, these days, by far and away the preferred format for everyone except the BBC.
You might think that you’ll get noticed there, and you may well, save that the BBC really only wants good technicians and is not really that interested in originality or creativity. They would probably argue differently. It’s not my experience, nor that of many scriptwriters with whom I’ve spoken. There used to be a rule of thumb that the BBC would not employ any writer unless they had first done a soap. I know many scriptwriters who write for the BBC on soaps. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut with soaps.
If you’re lucky, after you’ve done a soap, you’ll get a fifty-minute episode of a long running drama. Personally, I’d avoid the BBC unless you really want to write on Eastenders or similar. The old terrestrial channels are similar in their attitude to writers and soaps. The only independent production companies making programmes for the BBC are well established. It’s an old boys club.
Likewise, with Netflix, Sky, Amazon, Apple TV, Lionsgate, etc… only they are at least always looking for new ideas and are more open to projects. You still have to find a production company that will support you and root for you. In other words, you’re back to researching independent production companies or highish profile producers who like your work.
What about looking through scripts which are available online?
Think of a film and search for it using its title and ‘first draft script’. Avoid all that aren’t paginated like proper scripts. Avoid all that aren’t real first (or second) draft scripts. Many are written in the edit to reflect what’s on screen. You won’t learn as much from them as the original first draft script.
‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ is a good start, the original by Wes Craven. I’d also go for any of the John Wicks, Braveheart, Terminator 2. Yes, those are all old action movies. It doesn’t matter. They have the best formatting. Any number of books will teach you scriptwriting, but go for either Final Draft or for a cheaper option Fadein, which are industry standard scripting software programmes.
What seems to be in most demand - and what ideas are really non-starters, to avoid?
No one really knows what’s going to fly. So it’s all up for grabs. Engaging characters, good plots, character development are more important than genre.
Avoid writing things that are like something you love. So if you love Star Wars, don’t write a Star Wars clone. By all means write Sci Fi, but make it your own. Anything in the public domain is going to prove tricky. By that I mean history is a hard one to author because production company can and do say ‘we don’t like your script but we do like the idea, thanks and good bye’. Then they go and make it themselves. You have to make it sufficiently yours for them to realise they can’t do it without you. So, a different angle, specific characterisations etc… Either that you’ve sold thousands of copies are a household name, or you have a true story that no one knows or has written about before. You can then become the authority on it. Similarly, if you go for adaptations, if it’s still in copyright then you need to obtain permission from the copyright holder or estate. If you want to adapt your own book, well then beware. It’s very difficult to adapt a novel. Far harder than you realise. Scriptwriting is a whole different mindset to novel writing. This is nevermore obvious than when you take a novel you’ve written and rewrite for the screen. Boy, it challenges you.
In many ways scriptwriting is much harder than writing novels, and it’s also much harder to see the fruits of your labours out there.
Don’t expect go half-arsed into scriptwriting and expect to get away with it. Format is everything.
Here’s the thing (and for me this is the crux of it): Films are essentially old time, round the fire, oral storytelling – only in pictures. The best stories (not novels – stories) resonate in the human psyche and leave us with a feeling at the end best described as that ‘ah’ moment. They have a beginning, a middle and an end.
They have inciting incidents and rising action. They have a 3 act or 5 act structure, depending on your proclivity, and the very best end by bringing you back to the start only further on in time. In other words they aren’t a circular story, they’re a spiral viewed end on. To write a good script you must understand storytelling. You must understand what makes myths and fairy tales work. You must understand that this is what you are doing on screen. Even in a soap. Yes, even then.
This then, is why the scripts for action films make the best teachers because they are so tightly scripted, with everything in them doing the job its meant to do; with that hook at the start and 30 mins in the inciting incident; and the rising action through the middle so that by the time you reach three quarter of the way through you can see the moment when the climax is reached and everything starts to resolve; and the end where the last quarter of the film seems to speed by and yet all that’s happening is the tying up of loose ends and the rolling you out to the denouement or the nice goodbye. And if you step back from the action film script and take a look then at something slower, a romance say, you’ll notice the exact same ‘schematic’. Why? Because that’s how stories work. That’s how they’ve always worked. That’s what resonates with us and why we can watch the same film over and over again. Scripts/films that don’t follow this time-honoured path end up making us feel unsatisfied and often annoyed with them.
To write and sell a good script you’ve got to have passion, not just for your chosen subject matter and story, but for the actual process of scriptwriting – and there are all kinds of considerations such as setting up a scene three scenes ahead, and intercutting scenes with parallel action, and thinking about what’s happening in the background while your characters are playing out their scene, and transition dynamics – and all while you’ve got one eye on whether you’ve written too big a scene for it ever to get made because it’s going to cost and arm and a leg.
Angela Elliott
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About the Author
Angela Elliott is a scriptwriter, producer and author. Having won a BBC Radio writing competition in 1990, Angela contributed to the BBC Global Concerns programme before moving into documentaries and film with Stanley Kubrick assistant Norrie Maclaren at Tartan Television and Plantagenet Films. With Norrie, Angela originated, researched, and created over 30 documentaries and originated and scripted feature length films and dramas. She wrote with Director Lewis Gilbert's son, John Gilbert, and in association with actor Stewart Bevan and subsequently for Producer Bernie Williams. Angela now works in conjunction with fellow producers to develop projects for TV and film at Londonshire Films Ltd. She is the author of four novels, including "Some Strange Scent of Death" featured on the Discovery Channels "Unexplained" series, The Finish, The Remaining Voice, and The Nine Lives of Antoine Montvoisin. Find out more at https://www.angelaelliottbooks.com/ and follow Angela on Twitter @anjgi
See also: Guest Post by Angela Elliott, Author of The Finish: The Progress of a Murder Uncovered
great post, thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge
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