My next column about observations I’ve
had while reading scripts for contests this year will be short and can be
summed up by the cliché: where are the police when you need them. So many times
I read screenplays where people are threatened, abducted, attacked, mugged,
robbed, see something going on, stumble over a dead body, wake up next to a
dead body (fill in the blank here), etc. and they don’t call the police, not
because they don’t have a reason not to, but because if they did, the plot
wouldn’t work out the way the author needs it to. You really need to have a very strong and
convincing reason for people not to contact the authorities for it to get past
a reader the vast majority of time (we read a lot of screenplays and the more
we run across scripts with this sort of plot turn, the more likely we’re going
to recommend one that doesn’t have that plot turn).
Connected to this are scripts where bad
guys are killing people, causing mass destruction, having wild chase scenes and
shoot outs, and the police never show up, even late, or take the remotest
interest. Again, you have to have a very
good reason for this.
When questioned why a writer does this,
they often will say that “it’s just the genre”.
Remember this very carefully: if you say that you are doing something
based solely on genre expectations, nine times out of ten, that is code for
cliché and lack of imagination. Add to
this that more often than naught, it shows one doesn’t have a good grasp of the
genre. And if a character is doing
something based on genre expectation, that means that the character is doing
something because he knows he’s a character in a screenplay.
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