Screenwriting : If there are no rules, then how do you know if you’re doing it correctly? by Phillip E. Hardy, Prolifique

I ALWAYS color outside the lines of life, so "wing-it" is my category.

My years as a writer / editor / publisher have given me a tiny boost with my screenwriting journey and the hero's journey, tends to be the core of my story creations.

I apply many of the same practices to my script work.

When I have questions, I hunt answers.

Research where the "answer" is coming from. (reputable)

Review examples of "answer" at work.

Then maybe, apply.

I have a "Sherlock Holmes" nature.

I would never presume to believe my way would work for everyone.

At this point in my voyage, I may require adjustments! :)

Teresa: Thanks for sharing.

I sometimes use Save the Cat beat sheet but only as a guide.

Paul Castro’s Inspirational Screenwriting is a great resource when outlining a script. It’s really helped me shape my projects. I like to remind myself that Picasso mastered traditional techniques far before he began breaking the rules with his paintings.

As a hybrid(nope, don't be scared, I mean a writer-audience member type... just kidding), here are a few rules from the POV of me, as a viewer:

1. Don't be boring. Something should constantly keep me interested. When it's not an action scene, it's a cool dialogue line, or a joke. Or some sort of motion.

2. Don't take too much time to actually start the story. Briefly introduce the characters, then show stuff happening.

3. Cool dialogue lines, please!:) Quotes I can remember a few days after. Look up online for good movie quotes.

4. Even cooler action scenes/aim for exciting locations.

5. A personal thing of mine, but I just hate when I invest a lot in the hero, only to witness its demise(death) or not ending up with the girl/guy..:)

I believe in story. That we have to tell people a story in a way that is interesting and not predictable. If events have to happen in a paint by numbers manner then it has to be predictable.

I find that the people who are the most violent defenders of rules, tend to be those who call themselves consultants. (Sorry to be negative).

I don’t break rules. I don’t know them and don’t believe they exist. It is easy to look at history find commonality and call them rules. It’s just not true.

A few years ago the AMPAS Nicholl FAQs listed a number of rules. At the end, the text continued something like "Winning Writers have broken all of these rules."

A peek at Spec scripts getting traction on well-known sites is a lesson in thumbing your nose at the rules.

I like Michael Hauge's approach to story, but not necessarily structure. No matter what you follow, there's a beginning, middle and end. I outline story in FD's Beat Board but leave room for the story to be organic.

I'm newer to this than most, but even outside of screenwriting in books I've published, I mostly wing it. I somehow don't like the idea of being stock in a box where I can't do this nor can't do that you know? In coming into screen writing, I've basically read scripts and patterned myself on those I think are great and compare my story to those. Does it flow? Does it capture the audience? Is the plot good enough? I focus more on the story itself than the format or structure of the actual script. If something feels like it would make the script better as I'm writing then ,"BLOOP", in it goes haha That's my current methodology.

There are no rules ... but there are best practices. Those develop over time and are generally accepted as smart ways to go. Like any industry ... this one has best practices. Follow them, don't follow them, entirely up to you. But... not following them has consequences... so know what you are setting yourself up for by ignoring them before you ignore them. How do you know what best practices are best? That's a whole other discussion. :)

Rules, best practices, guidelines - they're all simply ways to help outline/flesh out a story and get it on the page, right? Every story is different and demands to be told in a slightly different fashion. My experience is to have a working template/modus operandi of how you best but your ideas on page and pursue your story. It will likely help you tell it. The alternative is to manipulate a story into a previously prescribed mold and that's a recipe for disaster. Rules aren't necessarily bad (keep your script under 120 pages). Just know when to break them and why. Please forgive the longwindedness.

Agree with Jeff. Not disagreeing with Phillip, because I know he utilizes what Jeff calls "best practices,." and what I call "elements" of dramatic structure...theme, premise, plot, sub plot, character, dialogue, rising action, conflict, twists, reversals, revelations, symbolism, exposition, subtext, irony, climax, falling action...etc. Maximizing their effectiveness usually doesn't happen unless a writer is aware that they exist.

Those might not be "rules", but when it comes to maximizing dramatic writing, they are certainly at the top of the list - at least on my list.

Also be aware that in TV writers' rooms, there really are etched-in-stone rules, like certain things have to have by certain moments/minutes, certain characters can only have certain things happen to them, and what is said in the writer's room stays in the writer's room, etc. And if an indie film producer says to you, "the story has to take place at a cabin on the lake, and the wimpy stoner who got killed earlier didn't really get killed, but saves the cheerleader from the zombie lifeguard at the end," well...those are the rules, too.

Best fortunes to all!

RIP DICK DALE (May 4, 1937 - March 16, 2019)

Awesome post Phillip. I want to share a brief (sorry not brief enough) bio of my journey in film to illustrate what I would like to say...

I started screenwriting 25 years ago. Back then I wasn’t aware of any educational opportunities... there weren’t even any books. I did three things to help my education:

1. I started working on film sets first as a production assistant and then for 15 years as a camera assistant. This taught me the language of film, how to see in words and images, how to see editing (very important), subtext... the works. Working in camera put me right at the center of the set. I was privy to or part of every major discussion between the director and cinematographer and the producers. It was a massive education.

2. I started reading every screenplay I could get my hands on... but more specifically... only excellent screenplays. I wasn’t interested in learning bad habits or how to write bad films. I became a student of what was considered excellent in filmmaking. I now have a very good radar on how to detect a very excellent film as opposed to a film that I like simply because I like the genre or I like the subject matter. And that is a real skill.

3. I wrote. I wrote 13 feature films in 10 years while I was working on set. Whenever I had a break from shows I would take that time and write a feature film. And then a funny thing happened after about 10 years and 13 features... my house got robbed.

You have to remember this is way back, so I had a laptop computer that worked with floppy disks. The thief came in and swiped my entire desk into a pillow case. My computer, my floppy disks, everything. I ended up losing 10 years of writing that day. A friend of mine knowing how I must’ve felt gave me a book called the Writers Journey by Christopher Vogler. It had come out just a few years before this occurred but I had never heard of it. When I read that book I began to understand structure and I also understood that every feature film that I had written up to that point was crap.

Complete crap.

The next screenplay I wrote I still use to this day as a sample.

What I'm trying to say is, there is an evolution... a life cycle... to what we do, how we learn, how we create. And everybody has their own path. Screenwriting is an art but it is also very much a professional craft. As the 'story experts' on a production's creative team, writers are obligated to know and be able to work with the tools of the trade. For us those tools are story structure theories and dramatic devices. To me it's that simple. If I want to participate in one of my projects beyond selling a TV pitch or optioning a feature... I have to be prepared to be able to contribute in my role as story expert for the production from start to finish (usually only doable on indies but I have experienced this start to finish process and it is incredible).

Now my secret is I hated rules and structure just as much as everybody else when I first started. Even when I started learning structure I hated it because my work was becoming flat and formulaic. What I had to understand is that what I experienced in those early days is an absolutely natural thing... I was thinking about structure instead of finding flow... of course the writing is going to suck.

But I stuck with it and what I have discovered is that by understanding WHY certain rules and theories have truth in them, I was able to work with structure to open up my creativity. I worked and worked with structure until it became second nature, my writing went to a whole different place... it hasn't stopped expanding, getting deeper, getting tighter.

You have to work with these tools to get beyond the clunky crappy time. You have to learn.

Let me put it this way, if I'm looking for a new doctor who do you think I'm going to choose; the one who wasn't at the top of their class but spent every minute of the last 20 years seeing patients and catching up on journals so they can be a better doctor, or the top of the class graduate who has spent the last 20 years on the golf course?

Second secret I admit to... I am one of those consultants that Craig has complex feelings about... don't worry I work with production companies, not individuals so I will never be marketing to you... but as a consultant I have seen in almost every case where a story is failing... it is because of bad story structure. Everything else depends on structure so if the structure is weak, the project will fail.

So do I use structure? Yes. Do I respect rules? Yes. Do I break rules? Yes. Do I understand that when I am breaking rules for effect I am actually satisfying another more important set of rules? Absolutely.

Everything is changing, evolving, deconstructing and rebuilding in new forms... read all you can, write all you can learn all you can and don't stop. That last one is important... don't stop learning. I learn everyday... and that's easier now thanks to you guys.:)

Do as the Dalai Lama does? "Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively." It's quite a jungle out there when it comes to screenplay writing 'rules and regulations.' As a relative latecomer to this refreshingly limitless creative arena, I seek to learn the art and craft of screenwriting from a diverse range of authentic voices and combine knowledge and intuition during the writing process.

Before the Internet came along, I'd come up with a story outline whenever I had a concept that I wanted to turn into a screenplay. I'd then make a scene list; after that, I'd go to note cards...with each card representing a scene. Each card would have scene descriptions and dialog. (Sometimes, I'd need multiple note cards for certain scenes.)

Then, finally, I'd go to my old IBM Selectric and type out the script itself...based on what I'd written on my note cards.

I started realizing that, the way I was doing things back then, what I'd written on the cards was, basically, the script itself. Taking the work to the typewriter was a formality.

Since getting back into screenwriting in 2016, I've been working from a more heavily-detailed scene list to turn out my newer screenplays. These new scene lists have some dialog in them, but they emphasize descriptions...and, in addition, include my plot points, which I type out in boldface.

Ah...plot points. My system is a carryover from when I was still trying to write made-for-TV movies and is a variation, to tell the truth, on Syd Field's three-act structure.

I use six plot points, with points two and four serving as the pivotal ones. (Point two in a 120-page screenplay should take place around Page 40, while the fourth plot point should fall around Page 80.)

And I still use the Sherman Cohen/"Billboard" charts astrology system to flesh out my characters.

"Really Old School" was the first script I ever came up with using the heavily-detailed-scene-list system (as well as my first screenplay in 22 years!), and "Pixie Dust" (one of three I'm currently working on) works the same way.

One thing about the new system: I think more about dialog than I did when I used note cards.

Looking forward to- and fired up about- continuing the journey. (Thanks, Stage 32!)

Good question but I think it doesn't necessarily mean that there's no rule otherwise writers would create story that could get the director's mind into a conflict; what I understand about this "no rule" is merely a way to allow the writer's creativity to get some space above what is already established in the writing concept. Let's think about Tarantino it is like that vibrating music in a dance floor and all of a sudden the beat changes to slow jam that's what I think about his movies and some concider it literally unlinear story when all you expect is a tender kiss, tight hug or push back with the flat of the hands but instead you see a blood oozing in the neck spreading in everything around or head exploding after a double barrel riffle's chamber works the bullet out, this sounds crazy right, but it is still a good story.

That's my point of view

I believe it's a combination of best practices and solid storytelling. Where we used to adhere strictly to the Hero's Journey, now many writers are practicing the Collective Journey.

Maybe tomorrow it will the Mass Journey. Or none at all. I have seen that, whether it's intentional or not. :)

This is such an awesome and much-needed topic to discuss! I have done both winging it and strictly sticking to structure. I found winging it just created a mess that never turned into a finished piece worth anything. So, I now stick out the frustration of structuring the entire screenplay by potential scenes, and then build the framework necessary in each act. I think employing structure takes time that a lot of people don’t want to spend, but it’s crucial if you love your story. Professionals can easily spot structure, and when they see it, they see “potential” in you as a screenwriter and know you’ll do well because you’re willing to do the work. Syd Fields, Blake Snyder, Steven Pressfield, and David Trottier are all subject matter experts who I read constantly to ensure I employ the proper structure.

I attend WGA seminars and the Writers speaking, who have the big jobs you read about in the trades, they come from playwright backgrounds and swear by Aristotle's Poetics.

You don't. You got to do your best from what you know. If it's received well, you can be assured you must have at least done something right.

William Goldman said it best: "Nobody knows anything."

I have talked to several industry people swearing to stay away from Narration. Yet most movies are narrated. I call BS on the myth.

Frankie Gaddo Goldman's famous quote is about marketing, box office hits & failures. Of screenwriting, Goldman had a set of rules/beliefs.

I remember reading one guru whose book boiled down story to a Venn diagram. VENN DIAGRAM! And if you just hit that sweet spot, you were guaranteed untold riches.

Stage 32 - I would like to announce I am retiring from stage 32 debates. Undefeated. 3-0. Yes I kept track of my record. I will not be accepting Dan's call out as I've already beat him before and don't see a point in a rematch. But I will say the way I used William Goldman's quote is entirely fine and if we did debate, I would win. I will be using this extra time to work on my screenwriting which will be a better use of it. Retired. 3-0. Frankie.

I think bad writers make the same mistakes. The common an obvious solutions people have mistaken for rules.

Plus there is the other aspect that people like things familiar to them. So patterns make the common person feel safe. Once you go beyond coomon and start moving into the world of excellence and art. Then common is bad.

I'm personally still into Syd Field's structure, and that's what I'm looking for when reading a script. Some may say it might be an old school concept nowadays. They're maybe right, but if you're trying to sell your first screenplays I'll definetely go in that direction.