Question: Is it necessary to write with a 'formula' to craft a great script?





I was extremely fortunate to launch my career by having Ridley Scott hire me to write a screenplay and fly me to London to work with him on developing the story. The first night we went to dinner, one of his producers leaned across the table and asked me, “You go to UCLA, right?” I nodded. I was still in my second year of film school. He shook his head, warning, “If you try to write this script to one of those bullshit film school formulas you’ve been taught, I’ll fire your ass and hire a real writer.”

At first I thought he was joking, or at least I sure hoped he was. Because that was the only way I knew how to write a screenplay, and my greatest fear was they would realize they had made a mistake in hiring me and fly me home–or make me walk.

The script, a sci-fi thriller called Metropolis, never got made. But it turned out to be the best experience of my writing life. The producer took me under his wing and patiently taught me specific tools and techniques needed to organically structure a non-formulaic script.

A few months later my agent invited my wife and me to one of her dinner parties. She was a major agent at ICM and represented such people as Callie Khouri and Milos Forman. The party was full of writers with successful careers and hit movies – the kind of career I so desperately wanted. After dinner and a fair amount of wine, the conversation turned to writing. As I listened, it became increasingly clear these writers weren’t using the popular paradigms taught in the books and seminars. In fact, they openly made fun of the writers who do.

Yet a growing and highly profitable industry continues to sell writers on formulas by branding them as universal paradigms or genre guidelines or structural building blocks or the like. They do an incredible marketing job of making it seem like following their particular edicts is necessary for success. It’s like the gold rush. Almost none of the prospectors got rich. The real fortune was made by selling items to the prospectors, such as divining rods and maps to supposed gold-rich veins. There’s always been a fortune to be had selling things to the dreamers.

And what’s heartbreaking is just how many talented and dedicated writers waste valuable years writing script after script with no real chance of success because they’ve been told that professional writers need to use a certain paradigm, which is patently false. Or that readers look for certain plot points, rejecting scripts that don’t have them, when in fact, the exact opposite is true.

I recently had Julia Howden speak to my UCLA class. Julia is one of the industry gatekeepers, having worked as a creative executive for various studios over the past eleven years. She told the group about her first day on the job. Her boss gave her three scripts from the black list, each one commercial, but also fiercely original. He then gave her three scripts written to one of the popular structure books advocating what must happen on pages 1 to 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 30, and so forth. He told her the first three scripts were real screenplays and the other three were bullshit and her job was to never let a bullshit script cross his desk.

She finished her talk by quoting the great Earnest Lehman, who said, there are only three screenwriting commandments you can’t break if you want to have a career:

Never confuse the reader.

Never bore the reader.

Never have characters do or say things they really wouldn’t do or say in order to advance the plot.

And writing to a formula inherently violates the last two.

Corey Mandell is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter who has written projects for Ridley Scott, Wolfgang Petersen, Harrison Ford, John Travolta, Warner Brothers, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Fox 2000, Fox Family, Working Title, Paramount, Live Planet, Beacon Films, Touchstone, Trilogy, Radiant and Walt Disney Pictures. Corey teaches screenwriting at UCLA and offers private online classes using real time video conferencing. For more information please visit coreymandell.net