By William M Akers
Your Screenplay Sucks! is a checklist of 100 of the most common errors that screenwriters – particularly new screenwriters – make, that stop the reader in their tracks and leave the writers opus forever destined to be filed under ‘bin’. Nicely sectioned into three ‘acts’ that cover Storytelling (idea, character, structure, scenes, dialogue), Physical Writing (format, scene description, rewriting) and What Now? (Being professional, the industry) it’s laid out like a checklist that you absolutely need to compare your own efforts against before you even think about sending it out, but rather than just pages of ‘don’t do this’ notes, it shows the corresponding ‘do this’ that will remedy problems and lift your script out of the file marked ‘bin’ and into the pile marked ‘recommend’.
Some of the advice seems obvious; for example making sure your characters have very different names. It sounds stupid but the number of scripts I’ve seen where three main characters are Bob, Todd and Tom (or similar) leaving me bored and confused by page 20 makes this a useful tip. Others are less obvious like ‘You have no time pressure’ but are equally important because without an imperative to act, your characters might just as well sit around and read the papers. In all, these 100 checks amount more than just helpful hints, they are almost a complete screenwriting course, covering everything from honing your idea to sending the completed pages to the market, it’s worth buying for the sections on scene description and image order alone.
The book ends with a bunch of hard-nosed advice on the Hollywood system and some home truths on navigating it, and given that Mr. Akers has been writing screenplays for 20 years and, more importantly, had three movies made and on top of that is a Lifetime Member of the Writers Guild of America you had better sit up and take notice.
I’ve read a shedload of screenwriting books and while some are good and some are bad I’ve learned something from most of them. This one however ranks amongst the best I’ve ever read, chock full of easy to absorb advice that will absolutely improve your screenplay if you’re prepared to put in the work. So stop punishing yourself, recognise that Your Screenplay Sucks! and then buy William M Akers book and start putting it right. Then leave it by the laptop – you will need it every time you write
Your Screenplay Sucks! is published by Michael Wiese and is available from Play.com, Blackwell and all good book stores.
William M Akers has a website