If you’ve written a couple screenplays and are a few steps down the road in your screenwriting journey, it would be easy to dismiss Adam Levenberg’s book The Starter Screenplay. But unless you’ve had a six-figure script sale, it’s worth a read. Because until you get past that point you’re still essentially at the staring point.
And if you inspire to write screenplays that become movies like Inception, The King’s Speech and The Social Network then The Starter Screenplay is an excellent book for you to read. Because while writing those kinds of movies may be your goal, it’s not where you start. In the beginning of his book, Levenberg defines his basic concept:
A Starter Screenplay is a script that gives you a shot at breaking into Hollywood.
Starter Screenplays are simple and practical. There is one hero. Events take place in present day reality, preferably in the United States, usually in a neighborhood or contained locations. The hero is provided a love interest, a ticking clock, a clear cut goal, and depending on the genre, either a life and death or family and career on are on the line.
In other words, you’re going to be writing a movie that executive want to make and audiences want to see, featuring characters we’d like to be. The creative energy you’ve wasted in the past trying to ‘be original’ with your structure and characters will be re-directed towards writing amazing dialogue, exciting situations, and stocking your spec with ideas and moments of value that display your talent as a screenwriter.
He then spends the rest of the book filling in the blanks going over things like what not to write (‘No struggling writers or actors as heroes”), his 10 commandments of your starter script (“one hero only”), ten essential elements of your hero (“your hero should be 25-40 years old”), and some practical nuts and bolts on the script itself (“Don’t shift the story away from the hero for anymore than three pages”).
You won’t agree with Levenberg all the time, but you probably don’t even agree with yourself all the time. If you haven’t had a major script sale then it’s worth a read just to shine a light on your writing to date and see if there might be a couple gaps in your thinking.
I’ll give you one more example from The Starter Screenplay that might save you a couple months (or years) of your life. Do you have a dark, edgy story about the miserable condition of the human race?
“Screenplays are for movies that people want to see. Farmers in Iowa don’t want to wash up after a hard days work, drive forty miles and pay $20 for a ticket, settle in to a cushy chair, munch on popcorn and soda, and watch a kid get raped.”
Adam Levenberg
His point is not that stories of drug addition, domestic violence, and other hard topics never get made into movies, just that that is a difficult place to find success in the spec screenplay market and your energies could be better spent elsewhere.
Related Post: Starting Your Screenplay (Tip #6)
[…] If you’ve written a couple screenplays and are a few steps down the road in your screenwriting journey, it would be easy to dismiss Adam Levenberg’s book The Starter Screenplay. But unless you’ve had a six-figure script sale, it’s worth a read. Because until you get past that point you’re still essentially at the staring […] Original Source… […]
I’ve been raving about the Starter Screenplay for the past two months. Its filled with lots of practical advice.
Thanks so much for your blog.
You could always get your script into the hands of someone who can give you excellent feedback, and pass it to someone in the industry who can get it made.