Film Courage: What notes do you give screenwriters the most?
Writer/Instructor and Script Consultant Shannan E. Johnson (The Professional Pen): There’s so many. I give some of the same notes so much that I now have a template of notes so that back in the day I used to have to rewrite the same note over and over and over but now I kind of have a template of some of the notes I give the most often. I think the largest one is lack of a goal or a problem to solve and lack of an inciting incident because the inciting incident causes the goal or the problem to solve. Usually if there is no goal or no problem it’s because there was nothing that caused it. I end up giving those two things or I’ll say Your inciting incident is very clear, this is what it is. Anytime I do it I follow it up with This is what it is that way the writer can go That’s not what it is and they can realize Well it’s not as clear as you thought it was. Just because you have a clear inciting incident doesn’t mean you now have a clear goal or a clear problem. That’s the nuts and bolts of what your screenplay is. If your inciting incident isn’t clear and if the goal that they’re trying to achieve or problem they’re trying to solve isn’t clear then now I’m going to be lost in the sauce of the rest of your screenplay because I don’t know what I’m tracking. Kind of like an essay, you have the first page of your essay, you have to have your thesis statement usually in your first paragraph because the thesis statement is telling us This is what my hypothesis is, this is what I’m going to try to prove to you and then…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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About Shannan:
After grad school I became a junior creative executive at NBCUniversal at the Syfy Channel. I was there for the rebrand. Remember Sci Fi? Yeah, not really. Anywho, it was my job to help writers and producers take their ideas from pitch to production. I co-exec’d on Alphas, Being Human, Haven, Sanctuary, Warehouse 13, and more Syfy dramedies. This is how I honed my skill in all stages of the screenwriting process…(read more here).
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