Script Doctor Tips
Script
Doctor tip 1
A quick start and continued success
Writers Workshop Script Doctor is a book,
and an electronic book, for beginning screen writers, and also for more
advanced screenwriters who need their creative skills reawakened. It will
make you think. It will help you look at your story critically, and find
and correct the things that prevent it from working. It also contains extensive
information on creating characters, and other information. Script Doctor
includes the top twenty mistakes that writers make, based on statistics
from evaluations of scripts submitted to National Writers Workshop.
Each topic has a Script Doctor button in it. Click
this button for a tip from Script Doctor, and for more information
about what Script Doctor offers.
Script
Doctor tip 2
dramatic structure and plot
Five power points in three-act drama
A powerful plot may sell even with weak characters.
Plot is that valuable. Yet, in the highly competitive screenplay arena,
good plots must be exceptional. Briefly following are seven tips that will
help make your plot a success.
The five power points in three act drama section
of Writers Workshop Script Doctor, gives clues to strategic points
that make powerful plots:
Avoid formulas
Crisis and decision points: Use Crisis To Develop
Crucial Scenes
Five power points in three act drama
Power point 1: Hook that engages viewer interest
Power point 2: Crisis that motivates the main character
into action
Power point 3: Mounting tension through three obstacles
Power point 4: Climactic challenge that seems insurmountable
Power point 5: Satisfying resolution
Script
Doctor tip 3
What to write: choices, choices, choices
As a story begins to take shape, a writer is faced
with numerous choices. What concept shapes the storyline? What genre should
the story be written in: should I make this a heavy drama, or would it
work better as a light comedy? How real should the sex scenes be? Can I
get away without doing research? How true to life should I make the story?
Where should I start writing - with characters, situation, or plot? Should
I write the story in scenes, or try writing in sequences?
Informed decisions can prevent a lot of rewriting.
I know, I know, you really can't wait to do some extensive rewriting.
But if not, the following subjects are covered in
Writers Workshop Script Doctor:
Choosing A Genre
Genre Is Perspective, Mood And Style
Comedy: Highest Art
Romantic Comedy: Always Good
Action/Adventure: Best Seller
Mystery, Suspense Thrillers
Tragedy
Using Concept To Focus The Story
Base The Story On Character Or Situation?
Realism: Where To Draw The Line
Sequences: Advanced Writing Technique
Script
Doctor tip 4
How to write
Writing is a process. How is writing a process? There
are many elements that go into writing and they all interact. To state
the opposite, you might set a goal of writing a story where a man goes
after a fish and encounters several obstacles along the way and finally
gets the fish. You have established a simple goal and can probably write
the story from beginning to end without a stop. Some writers write this
way. But most of us underestimate just how complicated a good story really
is, or how much work goes into creating it.
In the section on the process of writing, Writers
Workshop Script Doctor thoroughly describe the process of writing,
including the following chapters:
Developing Honest Characters & Powerful
Plots
Becoming Free To Explore
Base The Story On Character Or Situation?
How To Use Motivation To Form Characters And Plot
Script
Doctor tip 5
Making characters that live and breathe
Why try to understand human motivation - aren't people
very complex?
The more real a character is the more engaging he
is, especially if he is unique and addresses a problem we identify with.
So it makes sense to develop a character as fully as possible. So becoming
a student of human motivation will help you make good characters every
time.
Writers Workshop Script Doctor has chapters
like the following to help you understand character motivation:
A Character Motivation Primer
Becoming Free To Explore
Writing As Discovery And Integration
Destiny?
Character Growth
Originality: Stretch Your Writing Skills
The Process Of Change
Quick Cues To Character Motivation
Developing Characters Using Motivation
How To Use Motivation To Form Characters And Plot
Script
Doctor tip 6:
Making powerful plots
Five power points in three-act drama
A powerful plot may sell even with weak characters.
Plot is that valuable. Yet, in the highly competitive screenplay arena,
good plots must be exceptional. Briefly following are seven tips that will
help make your plot a success.
The five power points in three act drama section
of Writers Workshop Script Doctor, gives clues to strategic points
that make powerful plots:
Avoid formulas
Crisis and decision points: Use Crisis To Develop
Crucial Scenes
Five power points in three act drama
Power point 1: Hook that engages viewer interest
Power point 2: Crisis that motivates the main character
into action
Power point 3: Mounting tension through three obstacles
Power point 4: Climactic challenge that seems insurmountable
Power point 5: Satisfying resolution
How To Use Motivation To Form Characters
And Plot
Script
Doctor tip 7
Making electric scenes
The reader has an imagination and will use it if
it is stimulated. If you can draw him into the drama, he will supply all
the details necessary and not even know it. Engaging his imagination will
elecrify the scenes.
Writers Workshop Script Doctor gives you the
tools for engaging them in chapters like the following:
Originality: Using Conflict And Viewer's
Imagination To Develop Original Scenes
Consistency: Making Action Follow From Previous Drama
Movement: Making Action Move The Story
Entering: Making An Entrance
Risk: Increasing Emotion And Tension
Electric Scenes: Getting What You Want In A Scene
Script
Doctor tip 8
Making dialogue relevant
Dialogue is when characters talk - that's all it
can be. Information important to the story can't be given in the scene
description/instruction lines because if the characters don't say it, it
will never get to the audience. So avoid making remarks in the scene instructions
like, "It was ten o'clock on a sultry August evening in an isolated beach
community. John had been watching TV and Phyllis, who worshipped him, had
left an hour earlier...." None of this information gets to the viewer so
it is totally irrelevant. If the character doesn't say it in dialogue or
make it obvious through some action, then for all practical purposes it
isn't in the script.
Writers Workshop Script Doctor has chapters
on dialogue like the following:
Pumping Up Dialogue
Relevant: Moving The Story Forward
Showing: Avoiding Exposition And Sermons
Length: Less Is More
Script
Doctor tip 9
Twenty of the biggest secrets
If you had a ten thousand dollar car sitting in your
drive with a flat tire, what would you do with it? Park it behind the garage?
Shuffle it around to the car lots trying to sell it as damaged goods? Read
a book on how to design a car? Unless you're eccentric or insane (appreciate
that I'm on dangerous ground here), you would probably invest a few dollars
in fixing the tire - makes sense. But what do you do with a screenplay
that doesn’t sell? One you have invested a lot of yourself in, with a potential
value of forty thousand or more. Keep shuffling it around to agents and
contests? Park it on the top shelf of a closet? Read yet another book telling
the same old things? Yes! Writers do with their screenplays what they wouldn't
do with their car.
Writers Workshop Script Doctor shows you how
to find and repair the twenty most common mistakes made by writers in chapters
on characterization, plot and structure, scenes, and dialogue:
CHARACTERIZATION: PROBLEMS & CURES
1 - Motivation: Motivating Puppet Characters
2 - Originality: Fixing Stereotypes With Added Dimensions
3 - Consistency: Resolving "Out of Character" Problems
4 - Main Character: Deciding Who Drives
5 - Change and Growth: Making Characters Change
6 - Dull and Uninteresting: Making Characters Sparkle
Excursus One: How To Raise Dead Characters
You are free to give this article in its entirety to others (small groups, under 100) as long as the copyright with my name (Dorian Scott Cole) is included. This material is not public domain and may not be sold, mass distributed, published, or made electronically available in any form, without permission from Dorian Scott Cole. Complementary distribution (unpaid - no charge) will not be charged for. Visit the Visual Writer Web site for e-mail address information.