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So much happening in our world! My book, Meta Story, is now available. Also, we are running a contest to boost sign-ups to this newsletter. Since becoming a professor, I no longer hire myself out for script critiques. However, this summer we will draw one name from our newsletter subscribers and give a FREE SCRIPT CRITIQUE. If you know someone who might benefit from this, have them sign up on my website, or forward this newsletter and they can see the value for themselves.

TIP

A good piece of advice going into marriage deals with how to handle arguments. The counsel: “Is it more important to you to be right, or to be happy?” The less cute way of putting it, “Is your pride and ego paramount; or is the experience of your partner worth you not showing off right now?”

As writers, this can be our issue – there are times we may want to fight with our audience over what we know to be true and what they think might be factual. For example, I was in a library once and overheard someone asking the librarian when the Ides of April fell. The librarian responded with the 15^th, stating that “Ides” means “fifteenth.”

My Latin teacher, Miss Johnson, didn’t train no fools; so I corrected the librarian, “Uhm, actually, the Ides are the fifteenth for some months, and the 13^th for others.” The library expert proceeded to scold me for not knowing what I was talking about. We weren’t bickering about facts (I was correct – my pride demands I tell you that); we were bickering about perception. We all know the Ides of March are the 15^th; therefore, the Ides are always the 15^th, right?

Now imagine a scene in your movie. It is the 13^th of April, and a character says, “Beware the Ides of April!” You will have audience members going, “Um, actually…” Sure you are right, but the larger point is that the audience is no longer engaged in the story, they are engaged in a debate about the Ides.

My pride would lead me to leave the line in and be all puffed up about educating the audience. But, as a screenwriter, do I want to be right, or do I want to be happy? Or better put, do I want to be right, or do I want my audience to like my script?

Here’s the tip: leave your smarty-pants nature out of the script.

Or do what The West Wing does and cover up your own intellectual snobbery with the characters’ arrogance. Imagine Sorkin allowing me to write a walk & talk:

Josh: I should have listened to the soothsayer and watched out for the Ides of April.

CJ: Too late, the Ides was two days ago.

Josh: Today is the fifteenth. The Ides are the 15^th of the month.

CJ: A lot of people assume that, because the Ides of March are the 15^th. But the Ides are the 13^th in some months, including April.

Josh: Wow, you are so much smarter than a lot of people.

CJ: At least I’m written that way.

And this is why Sorkin never lets me write any of his stuff. See below for a discussion on how all of this applies to dialogue.

Free Resources: We are participating in a free resources giveaway. Follow the link for ideas on idea generation, insights to editing, a supplement to my own book with the five part story fill-in-the-blank, and a whole lot more!​ ​ Check out the resources here!

An Idea

An excerpt fROM my book, "Meta Story" on Dialogue:

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