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The Screenwriter’s Success Formula
By
Donald L. Vasicek

Wouldn’t it be nice to come up with a formula that you could use to write, sell and get your screenplays produced? Well, guess what? There is a formula. A- list screenwriters use it all the time. That’s one reason they are A-list writers.

The formula resides in the genre of film they are writing. There are several steps they follow. Some say there are twelve steps. Others say it depends upon the genre to determine how many steps you use. And still others say there are seventeen steps. The fine point of it is, if you can figure out the steps and execute them in your screenplay, selling and getting it produced becomes easier.

How do you do this? There are some people who write and sell screenwriting programs that outline steps writers can take to follow the formula of their chosen genre. They charge prices many screenwriters cannot afford. Other screenwriters might not be able to afford them, so they go in hock to buy them. Other screenwriters with day jobs can afford to buy them, so they do. If you’re one of those who cannot afford them, then there is another way to figure out the genre formulas.

The first step is to make sure the genre you have chosen for your screenplay fits the characters and storyline. The way you do this is to think about movies that you have seen or that you want to see. Consider if your movie idea parallels any of these movies. If you find one that does, you’re on your way. If you find more than one, even better.

The next thing you have to determine is if you want to write a screenplay that bears the potential of becoming a blockbuster. If you do, then you have to plug into a formula for writing it. If you don’t, the odds that you can write, sell and get your screenplay produced substantially decreases.

You have to realize that by writing screenplays, you have placed yourself in a situation where the odds for success are severely limited. There just aren’t enough movies made each year to match the number of screenwriters and screenplays out there. Just check with the Writer’s Guild of America if you don’t believe me. Check with productions companies, agencies and managers.

So, you should make a conscious decision before you begin writing about whether you want to write a formula screenplay, or go your own way and simply write a screenplay. If you decide that you want to write a formula screenplay, then, you have to follow a formula.

If you follow a formula, then you must know what genre you’re writing in before you begin. Once you determine these things, in lieu of buying the expensive screenwriting program, take that one movie, or those movies you found that parallel your movie idea, and study them. Try to find others that are similar and study them. Outline them scene-by-scene. Compare what you are discovering with each movie that you’re dissecting. FIND THE FORMULA for your chosen genre. It’s there.

Once you accomplish this, then you can outline your screenplay using this formula, and begin writing your screenplay.

Sound simple? Try it. I did that with THE CROWN/BORN TO WIN, an action/adventure feature I wrote and sold and it was produced. I studied BLACK STALLION and outlined it scene-by-scene. I did the same thing with several other movies of the same genre that contained elements of what I wanted to write. Dialogue. Visuals. Action. Description. Characters. Story. Even story beats. What I learned about the action/adventure formula by doing that was all the difference between getting my screenplay written, sold and produced and failing at it.

So, if you want to write, sell, and get your screenplays produced, you might want to try this. It works.

by
Donald L. Vasicek

Doc Holiday’s Grave – Glenwood Springs, Colorado

A few years ago, two producers greeted me when I stepped off the plane at LAX in Los Angeles. I’d barely made the flight. Seems the driver from my hotel in San Francisco miscalculated the traffic on the way to the airport. I had to race through security and virtually jumped on the plane to make the flight.

I was in LA at the producers’ request to discuss 2 scripts of mine. The glitz, the glamour, the pain, the agony; it was all present. Sony, CBS, and through Universal Pictures, this energy appeared to be stalking, or perhaps, following me.

It was Hollywood, but all the same, we discussed my scripts. One producer had her assistant retrieve a file. When he brought it, I swear he was carrying a baby elephant, the file was so big.

“Notes,” the producer said. Notes on my scripts. “Here’s what needs to be done, to change it, to make it high concept, you know, how that it is?”

I nodded, spied the glass of water in my hand.

“You know,” she said, “Getting your scripts produced is like winning the lottery.”

Perhaps you have to live in the fast lane, whatever that means, to be successful in the film business. There is one thing for certain, as the producers hammered my head, particularly, now on the way to a meeting with my agent, “If you don’t write for the sheer joy of writing, you are not going to succeed in Hollywood,” the female producer said.

They went on to tell me they thought my scripts were on the edge of being great. We know good scripts have to be great scripts to have a chance. “But,” the male producer said, I was going to have to go back into each script and identify the journeys my protagonists are taking so that I can write the stories more simply and with more authority.

By now, we were waiting for a stretch limo (limos are cliché in Hollywood, but people still use them), to take us to pick up an investor of theirs so that we could go to a dinner at a high-end club and listen to soft jazz over some Russian wine. They wanted her to meet me. I asked them, “How do you know that?”

The female producer explained, (she came from a successful Hollywood family, and was a produced writer/producer), “Your protagonists’ voices, in both scripts, are not quite clear enough. You’re going to have reach down deeper. You’ll know when you have them right.”

Then, perhaps, surprisingly, (we were in the limo slicing through South-Central Los Angeles where stores with bars on
the windows and doors appeared like the 1970’s Dirty Harry sets), the female producer asked me, “What do you want to achieve as a writer?” I blinked.

My agent was on my mind. She was late to the meeting, hugged me, kissed me on the lips and apologized for being late, said her assistant had gotten her schedule mixed up. I swore there was white smudge right under a nostril, but the club where we met had black walls. So was the ceiling, so it was difficult to clearly see details.  And she was so hyper.

“Well, uh, I…” I looked through a tinted window of the limo at an elderly woman in a wheelchair, slumped, with a scrawled sign, “Hungry.” And my back was turned toward the limo driver. Have you ever ridden sitting backwards in a car? It’s surreal if you want to look at it that way.

“I have things I want to share with people,” I said. “I want to see my stories on the screen.”

The female producer studied me with the eyes of a statue. “Then, you aren’t going to make it,” she said.

“Make it?” I asked.

She jabbed at her head. “Here,” she said, her voice cracking, “here is where you write from and here is where you make it.”

The dinner and the show were enjoyable. Some guy cracking some funny jokes. I laughed out loud as I checked out the investor. She was knockout, told me she was engaged to the comedian on stage. He did have some great guns.

Inside, though, I couldn’t wait to get back to San Francisco. Raindrops on the window in my plane appeared like tears on my face as I contemplated the rewrites on my scripts.  I had written them from the heart, with my mind, but then, the female producer, simply, to write from the head, only.  Hmm.

I purchased some oranges, apples, and bananas. Walked on Market Street. Handed out the fruit to homeless people until it was all gone. And then, remarkable as it might sound, I noticed the elderly lady in the wheelchair with the hungry sign from LA. I took her to dinner. I wondered how she had gotten to San Francisco, but then, I also wondered why in the hell the producers had invited me to LA in the first place, and perhaps this lady lived in San Francisco and I was seeing double. And I wasn’t going to ask her. She would’ve thought I was crazy. And who’s to say I wasn’t?

I was certain of one thing.  I had written the scripts from my heart and from my head.  If I were to rewrite them with my head, as the female producer suggested, then, there would be no heart in them.   And, my, friends, how many movies have you seen without any heart in them?  Those that don’t last in the theaters about as long as it takes to rain in Seattle.

The fine point of this story is that everyone has their own idea of what it takes to make a great script.  It’s the same as going to a movie with a friend, then discussing it, and discovering that each of you have differently perceived the movie.  You might like it.  Your friend might hate it.

Another fine point, write from your heart and write from your mind, and learn from others how to make that count.  The learning should be that you learn, but still make up your own mind about how good your script is.  Be objective when learning, but keep in mind that what one thinks is right with respect to writing a screenplay, another may think it is wrong.  It all depends upon the elements you are putting into your screenplay.  The mix of characterization and story, how to mix it, how to make it fine.  It all comes from the heart and the mind.