RainbowDragon said:
Or hop over to the writing partner/mentor area and put out an ad for a critique exchange.
If you wanted to, you could spend all your money on your spec script and it might still never be produced, so learn the craft and see if you can get the money flowing in the right direction--to you. . .!
But getting critiqued by a competent consultant can be part of "learning the craft" and can indeed accelerate the learning process, often greatly so.
We don't seem to mind spending $1,500 or whatever for our computer to write with or $250 for a printer to print our work, but we hedge when it comes to getting competent feedback. Makes no sense to me.
Some folks pay big bucks to attend film school and study screenwriting in a writing program. Four or five years of study and practice. I don't believe it's a craft that can be learned and developed in quick time or even anything less than four or five years if one is starting from scratch ... and assuming some command of the language going in..
We had a thread not long ago in which a writer from the Midwest told the tale of having sold a piece and then worked with its director to buff out his script. All he had ever done was read "how to" books. He was mind boggled at the help he got and what he hadn't learned and how much he learned in a few sessions with that director (in the end, this adventure didn't turn out so hot, but that's not the point here. The point is this guy was book learned and didn't know Jack, or hardly Jack. The sessions he had with his director blew his mind. His first exposure to competence.
For a beginner, any exposure to a competent analyst is good news, whether this occurs at a workshop, a seminar, or because they hire them to critique their script hardly matters ... what matters is they're hearing someone who knows the craft inside and out and who has the ability to convey that intelligently so that the writer actually learns a great deal from it. Just attending a seminar where one might hear a guy like Aaron Sorkin talk about screenwriting for an hour and then take questions can be an explosive learning situation, for any of us but in particular for a beginner.
Now think about what you might get for $100. In my book that's about three hours of work ... for a competent writer/analyst. Or it ought to be in any case. Given what other professionals charge, lawyers for exmple, it really oughta be no more than an hour's worth of work. You can't even read a script in an hour.
Bob McKee charges $5,000 for a critique. And gets it. Richard Walter, who was head honcho at UCLA Film School for years, gets the same. Syd Field is right in there somewhere. Successful screenwriters pay this tariff because they know their script is gonna be worth six figures or could well be worth that so it's a wise investment. And McKee has a Phd in Film Studies and has consulted with just about everyone in town.
There are a bunch of consultants out there who will give you a critique for between $60 and $200. You'll get a few paragraphs, a page or two of analysis, a half day's worth of work and sometimes the words are cut and paste from another critique they've done.
A writer looking for a consultant must get all prospects to give them a list of their previous clients and permission to contact them directly. Ask writers who have used a guy's services and hear what they think, and don't just ask one, ask as many as you can, three or four anyway. What did this guy do for you? Was it helpful? Is he a jerk, a nice fellow? What?
This will separate the wheat from the chaff.
Ask a prospective consultant what it is they are going to do for you and what form it will take. Judge how deep their analysis will go and determine what angles it will consider. Maybe gear your needs to the strong suit of some prospective consultant. Guy says he's good with dialogue, his clients affirm that indeed they are, you need help with dialogue, boom! He's your guy. Maybe ask them to see a copy of some earlier evaluation and critique they did for someone else. Judge what you might expect to get from them thereby.
I been doing this consulting thing for more than five years, more like seven or eight years now (time flies) and I've come to know many writers who do this kind of thing. The ones I like are the one who do it like I do it, because they enjoy doing it and see that it helps them keep their own chops up and current. It's a never ending gala of solving problems in scripts, and teaching the craft, which sort of just goes with the territory, assuming one cares in the least.
There are thieves and Charlatans out there, make no mistake, I've seen them go by too. But there are also many very dedicated and highly skilled guys around who know how to break a script down and put it to the test.
A good friend of mine who has credits on about 50 movies and a hundred television shows (director, AD, production manager, producer, exec producer, even actor) said to me one time, "It takes two weeks to absorb a feature." And by that he meant a feature spec.
This guy was one of those "Mr. Hollywood" kinda guys, his father had been a very well known cinematographer in the 50's and 60's and he himself started at Columbia at age 17, the day he graduated from Hollywood High.
You don't think he knew what he was talking about?
I do.
Regardless of what fee you might pay, you should get at least 5,000 words of analysis in return and they should cover all the well known angles of screenwriting we talk about all the time, and more. They should be well organized, trightly written, correlated to script parts or scenes or matters in the overall (adherence to the conventions of genre for example).
Some writers make for good consultants, others are lousy at it.
Read trades are okay ... as far as they go, they just usually don't go very far or very deep. Just because a guy can write doesn't necessarily mean he can analyze and critique, especially at a high level.
I've done critiques gratis for starving artists. I done them for free and had people send me gifts like pounds of coffee or bottles or wine. One guy in Scotland sent me a bottle of Glen Moray Single Speyside Scotch Whiskey, had to be a $150 bottle I reckon. I do it for the reasons cited above not for the dough, which is peanuts in any case. I've been paid as high as $1,500.
Imagine a young race car driver been doing the dirt tracks around the Midwest for two or three or four years he gets a chance to go to Indy and hang out in Paul Tracey's garage for a day ... or go to Daytona in February and spend a day in Jeff Gordon's garage or Earnhart Jr. Imagine what he'd learn doing that and how inspired he'd be from having that experience.
It's the same with a writer. Any exposure to competence is worth its weight in gold.
And, if we're to expect to get paid the going rate for our screenplay, we ought not be too hesitant about plunking down some dollars here and there to help assure that we will in fact be able to do that, and make it stick.
If you need a new cartridge for your laser printer, you don't hesitate buying one, because you know tomorrrow the phone might ring and someone will want a copy of your script. If your PC or Mac blows up and you can't write, you get it fixed or buy a new one. You don't even think twice about it. Some guys spend $200-300 a year entering contests.
A beginning writer should, in my estimation, sink their soul into their script and work themselves to the bone to make it all it can be and only when they think it is done ... go looking for a critique. Give it all you've got and then find out what you're missing, if indeed you are missing anything (and indeed you probably are ... if experience tells us anything).
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Cheers!
GWG ...
