Danielmedley.com

About Screenwriting

Lately I’ve been consuming as much screenwriting material as I possibly can between sleeping, family life, and actually writing.

If you are even thinking of writing screenplays I heartily recommend going over this site with a fine-toothed comb. The columns by Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio are worth paying good money for. On a regular basis you come across gems such as this:

A full theater is far smarter than the average studio executive.

In fact—I’ll go so far as to say, there are NO EXAMPLES of solid story-logic stories that were too difficult or demanding for the audience to understand.

The irony of most studio notes is that, in an effort to ‘simplify’ the story for the sake of the audience—so the audience will ‘get it’—the story is made nonsensical. And then no matter how smart the audience is, they will never be able to find the logic—because it isn’t there.

There is so much to be learned here.

the number one rule of writing should be to avoid insulting your audience...especially through condescension.

this is precisely what movie studios and executives are doing. who wants to read a book where the author assumes we are morons? i certainly don’t. or a poem where metaphors are stretched out until they no longer are metaphorical.

the same applies to movies. assume i am as smart as (or smarter than) you, and we’ll all be fine!

You’re right, Justin. But then again, the target audience nowadays seems to be pretty much preteen so it’s difficult to insult them I suppose.

ha! yeah...and to assume a preteen is smarter than you is also pretty hard to do after a day at the mall...holy crap.

your point, and mine, are still valid.