why don't consultants / gurus write screenplays?

Randall_Oelerich

Randall_Oelerich

Veteran
I have wondered about this. With all their knowledge and teaching / books / lecturing on how to write successful screenplays, why don't we see the major guru consultants writing and selling screenplays? I do not mean any disrespect to them by asking this question, it just seems strange that they do not put their knowledge to work to create some compelling screenplays to be made into movies. Are they really making as much or more money lecturing and writing how-to books as they would if they applied themselves to writing screenplays?

In fairness to some consultants, one of my mentors sold her first screenplay and optioned her second, and I know Robert McKee sold a few but I am not sure either person had their scripts produced. But aside from that, are there consultants that are writing screenplays and selling them?
 
its the same reason why sport coaches are coaches and not (once) players. they are giving a gift of being able to understand and know the business and everything that comes with it, but they lack the physical ability that is needed to play in the field. i honestly find any "writing guru" a waste of time and i do think people spend way to much time worrying and trying to do this and that. ive been a professional writer for many years and i have no idea what an act 1 is.

and feedback is the most overrated tool used in screenwriting. everybody is different in their taste in movies so what makes them so good that they can judge your work? 98% of the time they wont agree on most of it. there are reasons why no country for old men won an oscar and everybody i know and their mother didnt like the movie. keep on writing sweetheart!! forget these people lol
 
I would only trust a 'consultant' who has credits as a writer, personally. I know it happens, although I don't have any names. I'm just pretty sure I've read examples of that.
 
My favorite screenwriting consultant / author / what-have-you, Blake Snyder, just died this past week. Many people loved his books and his approach.

As it happened, he also wrote screenplays, and two of them were made into movies: "Blank Check" and "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot". It will come as no surprise that I do not have much affection for either of these motion pictures.

I mean, hell, the two most respected screenwriting books around are by Robert McKee and Syd Field. Look them up on IMDB one of these days...


There's also the flip side of the question. Why don't more screenwriters consult? Answer -- because they don't need to, I guess. If you're a very successful screenwriter, you may well not have the financial need to spend your time teaching / consulting / whatever.

Knowing and teaching are two different things, two different skill sets. If you attended a large university, you know that sometimes the professor you want is the young passionate teacher, not the big-name researcher to whom lecturing undergrads is merely a part of the job.


Similarly, film critics (thoughtful, intelligent ones, not hacks who just rate movies as if rating blenders for Consumer Reports) are able to discuss a film's flaws, attributes, significance, hidden meanings, and yet may not have the creative impulse to make their own projects.
 
The simple truth is they do write & they aren't good enough at screenwriting to sell it. The scripts they write are out there as a matter of public record and none have had a major film made. Does that mean their counsel is worthless? No, but just remember, they're not speaking from an authoritative position of success: so buyer beware.

A film on average cost around 61 to 63 million dollars and around 36 million for advertising/promo. That's 97 to 100 million dollars for a project that most often does not recoup its cost these days. The screenplay is the blueprint for the project. Take a look at a building costing 100 million dollars and ask yourself this, "have I put into my screenplay as much thought, education, blood, sweat and tears as the architect who made this building a possibilitity? Our answer should reflect a similair effort as the architect.


Why is it that most successful screenwriters don't write books on how to write screenplays?

A: They're too busy writing (making a living) -- and why would they give away any advantage they have in a highly competetive environment? They have no idea if they will ever sell another screenplay --- it's that tough.
 
Randall_Oelerich said:
I have wondered about this. With all their knowledge and teaching / books / lecturing on how to write successful screenplays, why don't we see the major guru consultants writing and selling screenplays?
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This sort of question can be asked in any artistic discipline... in the olden days, one would hear that so and so great composer's mother was his first music teacher... yet mothers, or women as a class, were totally unrepresented in most great composer lists... But even so, often 'great' for any value of 'great', the 'great' may not include 'teaching'... in fact, many students would fail, were they to rely on the instruction of the Great...
 
AdamBertocci said:
My favorite screenwriting consultant / author / what-have-you, Blake Snyder, just died this past week. Many people loved his books and his approach.

As it happened, he also wrote screenplays, and two of them were made into movies: "Blank Check" and "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot".
Click to expand...

Blake died!............... I'm shocked. His Web site said he had a heart attack. Blake was a great happy spirit!


This is really sad. We lost a great soul.

RIP.
 
Wow. Sorry to hear about Blake. My undertsanding is he sold tons of screenplays (like many professional writers) that never got made as well as the produced credits mentioned. I've read somewhere that he was hollywood's "most successful spec writer" which is probably not entirely accurate but meant he sold a lot of work.

As fore the can vs. do theory, I don't necessarily expect a NFL football coach (even taking physical condition out of the equation) to be able to get out there and quarterback and win. I do expect him to know how to "coach" the quarterback to success. There's also a reason that all football PLAYERS don't retire to coaching. Similarly some great artists can never 100% quantify and explain what they do and teach it to others. Some great teachers can never saddle up and execute what they preach as well as their most brilliant students. The difference is knowledge and experience vs. talent. Or at least a different kind of talent (teaching, coaching) vs what's needed for the said thing.

Also, it it was that easy, anyone who reads their books could sell / have their screenplays produced. Theory, even great theory, and execution are different things. I don't think any of these guys hold themselves up as great writers on par with their teaching careers. Master teachers / theorists first, then credible (not Oscar winning amazing) writers second.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
Wow. Sorry to hear about Blake. My undertsanding is he sold tons of screenplays (like many professional writers) that never got made as well as the produced credits mentioned.
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Yep, in Save the Cat he mentioned a couple scripts he sold that were never made. So he isn't just the guy who did Blank Check and Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot, at least in terms of sold material.

He had some really interesting sounding ideas for his other screenplays.

So besides the late Blake Snyder, I can't think of any produced screenwriters that have also become consultants or gurus. I'm sure there are some, but I just can't think of them at the moment.

I have to say that without some of those books by unproduced or unsold writing teachers, I wouldn't know nearly as much about writing as I do. But I also agree somewhat with what Ryan Paige said above, that we can get bogged down feeling like we have to read every book on the craft when really, we should be more focused on just writing. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we as writers need to establish a balance between study time and writing time. Both are important and beneficial to us as artists.
 
For me I bounce back and forth between the various books as a brainstorming technique / compass. Thinking about the type of beats they suggest at given points in the story gives me some direction, gets the inspiration going. Of course you have to be careful that you're not procrastinating / actually avoiding writing by thinking about it.
 
My opinion is that the only reason "gurus" exist is because they make money off naive newcomers who think that there some sort of "rules" they need to follow to get into "the biz".

When in fact if you look at any accomplished, working screenwriter at the top of their game, they don't care or even think about "structure" or "beats" or "motivation". They just write a good story and let everything fall where it may.

Other people may come in and point out how such-and-such screenplay perfectly conforms to such-and-such theory, but I'm sure the writer was completely unaware of following anything except what he felt was the best way to illustrate the material.
 
pmark23 said:
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When in fact if you look at any accomplished, working screenwriter at the top of their game, they don't care or even think about "structure" or "beats" or "motivation". They just write a good story and let everything fall where it may.
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I think lots of working writers beat sheet the hell out of their stories.
 
Hmm

Hmm

While I think the three-act structure and its specifics, what happens where, is very valid and an extremely helpful tool to keep the structure working and the script flowing, I can't say I understand at all or care about "the 15-beat" idea or whatever it is. I have NO idea what that is whatsoever, nor do I care to learn. It would be interesting only in an academic sense. I reviewed movies for years without ever knowing or hearing about the idea that there are 15 beats in a film, supposedly, and I certainly don't think it's necessary to learn them for writing either.

To get that bogged down in structure is a mistake. It's only useful if you really cannot write and can't figure out how to tell a story. Otherwise, it's just silly. There's a good reason why a film or script has a three act structure. But re-imagining every script or film into this silly 15 beat structure, well that's just silly as hell. It's a joke, I'm sorry. IF that works for you, fantastic, but it's not something you need to learn to write well.
 
I'm not saying all successful writers use the blake snyder beat sheet.

The idea of beating a story out is sooooo ubiquitous that i didn't think there was a need to specify Blake Snyder or no.

Writers use their own beats, Viki King, Blake Snyder, John Truby, Syd Field, Aristotle. Whatever. There's two approaches. Beat it out then write it or just start writing (Cohen Bros., Tarantino) but there's lots of owrking pro screenwriters that beat the hell out of stuff before hand.

My impression is that usually, structure and beats come in at some point in the development.

BTS on China Town the writer talks about he and Polanski putting all the beats up on a door to the office and moving things around for a month before finalizing the script.
 
I couldn't agree with you more Ryan. Absolutely, I think that the structure to a screenplay is extremely important because it's what allows for good pacing, for good story movement, and basically that it has these dramatic elements we find in a lot of the work we love, but I agree that comes from an understanding and study of film in general. I had come from a background in film review before, which I still draw upon and find very useful as far as referencing what I know has been done before, what I like, how it all works, etc. It's great to be able to think, "Hmm, ok I want to borrow this device form that film," or "Well, that was done successfully in this and that, so I could probably get away with it..."

I look for certain points to keep the story flowing along, so I do look at the 10% point as being the "opportunity" or inciting incident, like there has to be something in the first 10 minutes that is really catching and sort of gets our story moving along, then at 25%, 50%, 75%, and the points just before those act breaks, etc. I pay attention to that. But I don't sit there and go ok there are 15 story beats and I have to go find them all. I could care less about that. I want to tell a good story. That is not going to help me make a better story at all.
 
I've thought about this question too. The conclusion I came to was not that gurus and consultants don't possess the skill to write a decent screenplay, but that it must take more than technical know-how to produce a winner. And I believe that "more" is a compelling story to tell. You can study the craft until you croak, but unless you have something to say, why write?
 
Basically, yeah. It's mean to say but a lot of people have no clue what makes a good story and have nothing interesting to say, frankly because their lives and/or experiences are just not that unique or interesting. They don't seem to "get it."

A lot of people I knew in film school would write some trite gangster story yet again, which has been done to death by far better writers. Then others would be like, "Well I'm writing a story on my uncle Scott, he was an amazing guy, he was blah blah, and this is why he's so great." But it was never interesting to anyone else besides them.

Our producing teacher had some of my favorite commentaries, he always cracked me up. One time he was talking about how students would say, "But you can't criticize my script or story for that, look ok this is how it really happened! You can't criticize that because it really did happen this way." He was like, "WHO CARES?! It doesn't matter how it happened, because what you wrote is boring, and nobody said your story has to be told exactly how it happened." That's exactly right. It doesn't matter whether something really happened or not, if it's boring then it's boring, and if it's tedious and slow moving, then it sucks.

I suspect a lot of people just don't have much to say. When I read screenplays for a class in college, from the other students, there were about 12 other students I believe. Of those, I only liked 2 of the other screenplays. For the record I didn't much like mine either (creative differences with the way I wanted to go with it versus what the teacher forced). The other 10 were just too mundane, they were not interesting, it was boring romance crap that had been done to death or just put me to sleep. It was not stuff worthy of screenplays. The one that was my favorite was seriously amazing, I still to this day root for it to be sold and make it to a movie because it was that good. I don't know where this kid came out of, but it was awesome. He actually had only written about 40 pages, as the class required only 30 for undergrads and 50 for grads, but a complete outline of the remaining scenes and structure. My favorite was his outline for what he hadn't written, because the way it was going to go, the twist at the end, was ingenious. It was like a modern film noir or something, just really well told and a great concept. He got a B in the class. I also got a B. I really was angry about that, haha. Seriously if he got a B, fine, but I should have gotten a D- or something then because his script was ten times better than what I had, which was relatively crap basically.

I personally don't think that teacher has much of an idea what makes a great screenplay, though. Ok he teaches a screenplay class at a university (without a film program), but besides that he is a film reviewer and has *never written a single screenplay*! He even admitted this. I have no clue how someone can actually teach a screenplay class and has never even tried what he's asking us to do. I don't get it. But amazingly his numbers are pretty good, something like 120 students through that class and I think 3 of them ended up optioning the screenplays they wrote in that class. It sounds low but I think 3 out of 120 is amazing for a state college that has no film program, where most of the kids in that class were just taking it for fun, not for professional writing endeavors. I attribute that more to coincidence, though, as Oregon has always had a high number of people interested in film (among people I went to high school with, a disproportionate number have gotten into film).
 
If you read a screenplay and you don't notice you're reading because everything described is visually in your mind and you can hear the characters speaking and can't wait to experience what's next, then you have a great script, regardless if you or someone else wrote it.

If everyone you hand the script to has the same experience, its ready for the marketplace.
 
Why didn't Yoda or Obi Wan Kenobi defeat Darth Vader and the Empire? Those lazy bastards just sit around and torture Luke, then they go make him do all the dirty work.

Why didn't Morpheus just go to the Oracle and get all the proper leads that would take him to the Merovingian, Keymaker, and the Architect?
 
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