Hollywood screenwriters had a bum year last year. According to a report released in the last week, the Writers Guild of America, West reported earnings of $393-million (U.S.) last year, down 10 per cent from the prior year and 25 per cent below 2007's figure, the year of the writers’ strike.
There are fewer writers working and Hollywood studios are making fewer movies. The number of screenwriters who are earning any money in 2010 fell 13 per cent from the previous year, down to 1,615.
At the same time, the writer is increasingly powerless. In addition, since the 2007 strike, studios have changed the rules with which they work with writers. Prospective writers are sometimes placed in competitions against as many as a dozen other writers, with the producers picking the version they like the best. Writers are more often paid in “one-step deals,” meaning they are paid only for their first draft, with no guarantees they can do rewrites.
Yet people still want to be screenwriters, for a couple of obvious reasons: It’s still the best route to becoming a movie director and, if you’re successful, it pays better than almost any other kind of writing (J.K. Rowling and Stephen King excepted).
Thus, there’s one area where screenwriting is a booming business – the screenwriting-teaching game. Back in 1979, when Syd Field wrote his book, Screenplay, there were no other screenwriting books around.
Now there are thousands. Field, dubbed a screenwriting guru, does three-day workshops around the world, where people can be introduced to his “paradigm.” Field emphasizes that all kinds of ordinary folk – secretaries, advertising executives, doctors – can learn the secrets that make Hollywood movies. Or, perhaps they prefer Frank Daniel’s “eight-sequence” approach, which constructs a movie out of a series of 15- 20-minute minimovies. Or Robert McKee’s “step-outline” theory.
Each of these systems, typically organized by teachers with not a great deal of success as screenwriters themselves, seem to revolve around numbers. Things must happen by page 17 or page 30 or page 60 of the screenplay. Screenwriting in 30 days. Twelve steps to write a mythic screenplay. The 106 stages of the hero’s journey.
Such teachers as Field and McKee have influenced everyone from Peter Jackson to James Cameron to Tina Fey. Field’s three-act structure – with the long second act with a twist in the middle – is now the standard in Hollywood features, though not everyone thinks this is a good thing. Some critics, including Joe Eszterhas (Basic Instinct) and Quentin Tarantino, have criticized such formulas as anathema to exciting storywriting. Tarantino has said that American filmmakers went from being the best storytellers in the world to among the worst. But at least they fit what Hollywood studios want: a commercial formula.
I once interviewed William Goldman, a great screenwriter (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, The Princess Bride), who offered me his advice for aspiring screenwriters: Learn how not to be dull. It costs no more than a handful of movie tickets and an afternoon of your time. It works like this: “Go see one movie all day long. Go to the 1 o'clock show. Think of it what you will. Go to the 4 o'clock show. You'll see the movie, but you'll start paying attention to the audience. Go to the 8 o'clock show and you'll hate the movie, but you'll listen to the audience and you'll notice they laugh and cry at exactly the same place. And when they go pee and go buy popcorn, that's when the screenwriter is failing. You have to listen to the audience.”
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