Psychology of reading

Wow. Not only was the Daily Rant not funny or insightful, it wasn't even daily. That was a lame exercise that has died its rightful death.

So, I shall now turn my attention to something that has been churning in my mind for awhile. For those too lazy to read the title, it's "The Psychology of Reading."

Getting a screenplay bought or produced is like rolling a boulder up a mountain. The problem is that as the writer, we're stuck at the base of the mountain. We can only shove the boulder so far. At which point, we have to hope that other people take up the boulder and pass it up the mountain until it reaches the summit. If not, the boulder will either come crashing back down, crushing you in the process, or it will be caught on some unknown, unseen ledge on the mountain; out of your sight, out of your hands, but never out of your mind.

So how do we get other people to carry our boulder up the mountain? Step one is to exit Analogyland.

A screenplay that reaches the summit of Hollywood needs to pass through a labyrinth of readers. First, it'll go to the agent. Then the production company. Then to the talent. Then to the studio. Each step along the way, it gets passed from assistant to assistant, reader to reader. There are multiple desks it has to stop at before getting anywhere. Each one of these desks is designed to reject it. After all, you don't want to pass your boss a giant bolder only to have his boss decide it's not worth carrying. Time and energy has been wasted!

So, as a screenwriter, your work needs to stand out from the hundreds of screenplays that these people read every month.

As I said earlier, the idea is 95% of the process. A good idea makes the boulder significantly lighter, and therefore people are more willing to carry it.

But people may not discover how great that idea is unless they read through the entire script. And that's the challenge. These people have stacks of scripts to get through and write coverage on. They want to spend the least amount of time humanly possible on each one. If they can reject it quickly, they still have time to go out and get a drink Friday night. If they read every single word... ugh... what a life.

The faster a reader can get through a script, the more positive the experience was for them. Any script that feels like a marathon is already at a disadvantage.

Put yourself in that position. Think about what tendencies you have when you read a script. Try to engineer your script to meet those needs.

Here are some guidelines I came up with in no particular order:

1. Your script is not a shooting script, it's a reading script.

Shooting scripts are very bland. They convey only what the different departments need to know in order to perform their job. You need to make your script a fun read. Pack it with your voice. Be a little inventive in how you paint your scenes. You're telling a story, so make sure they enjoy it.

2. Keep your action paragraphs brief.

Rule of thumb is no longer than 4 lines. Try to keep them under 3 if possible. People who are speed-reading will glaze over the action. If a nugget of crucial info is buried within half a page of pointless description, they'll miss it. And then they'll be lost later.

Try to give a new paragraph to each individual action. Let's say you have a scene where Billy throws the ball, it breaks a window, then old Mrs. Hansen comes out to yell at him. That should be multiple paragraphs.

Readers will generally read the first bit of each paragraph so multiple short paragraphs will get more read than one long one. Don't put too many paragraphs in, though, because that will defeat the purpose and you'll still end up with a page of text.

3. Make your character voices distinct.

When reading through a conversation, readers will begin to ignore the character labels. They want to get into the flow of the conversation (which is what you want!). But it's easy to get lost on who's saying what. Keep your character voices distinct so that a conversation can be completely understood without looking at the names of whoever is speaking. This will make speed reading a breeze, and it's just good writing.

4. Make sure important tidbits are not missed.

If Jane walks into the room and sees a KNIFE on the table, and she'll later use that same knife to kill an intruder, make sure the reader sees that knife too. Capitalize it. Give it its own paragraph. Have her pause and look at it directly. Never make a reader say, "Wait, did I miss something?" They won't take the time to backtrack and find what they missed. If there's ANYTHING you plan to reincorporate into the script later, make sure the reader catches it the first time.

5. Have distinct character names and introductions.

"Teddy" and "Terry" should never have a conversation together. Why? Because it'll always be confusing who's saying what or who's doing what. It'll make the reader stumble at least once or twice during the script. "Wait, I thought Teddy was the one who found the money." Nope, 34 pages ago, that was Terry. And boy, did that add a new tint to those 34 pages.

In the same vein, character names should be very much a part of the character's identity. Don't just pluck random names from the air.

Don't give your characters names that all have the same feel. There are many common, all-american, same-syllable names. They become confusing. Sarah, Mary, and Susan all invoke a similar feel. It's hard to remember who is who. But if it's Sarah, Jacqueline, and Allie. Those names look, sound, and feel different.

The other half of this is about the introduction of characters. Space them out as much as possible. A big block of character introductions in the beginning is a major turn-off. Try to introduce a character, give them at least one line or "moment" and then introduce the next character. Give the reader that baseline to fall back on.