A writing student sent me a synopsis he planned to show studios to get them to read his love story (gone wrong.) His own life, actually, His marriage to the Russian girl from Hell. Here is exactly what he wrote.
"SHE WAS A RUSSIAN WOMAN" BY G S. Based on a true story. It is the story of a man who meets and marries a woman from the Ukraine, only to find that she suffers from a severe mental disorder."
My dear G. (I wrote him.) "I don't feel that you have chosen a very good title for your script, or a very showable logline for your film's synopsis. "SHE WAS A RUSSIAN WOMAN?" It's what a three year old would write in kindergarten or what a county intake worker would write on a note pad at a welfare qualification interview. Or in view of 9-11, it's what an INS employee would write on the entrance petition of a Russian una-bomber terrorist.
I also do not feel that paragraph up there is an acceptable synopsis as you are fairly intuitive, educated writer. --(I know this guy; He's read Karen HORNEY cover to cover to understand the Russian gal who did him wrong in real life.
This title isn't smart and It makes you look as if you weren't. Give even the synopsis your full shoulder. Give it your best, ladle the drama on thickly in a synopsis, no matter that it's brief. Pull out all the biggest story points, show the color of the yarn. Show how literary you are. This is a tiny sample and it can't be a bare thread or two. A square inch of intricate brocade, yes! The colors blinding. YES!
Try an evocative word for the title. GREEN CARD BRIDE or TATIANA the TERRIBLE! Then In the description. Meat on every bone, not just one flake of flesh and no juice. Fergawd's sake. You're a merchant showing your wares! Try to think how STEPHEN KING would write it..... Try: "People in Plainfield have never seen a Russian before as tourism never came to this remote, rustic, corner of Massachusetts but when a beautiful exotic Russian girl, Tatiana, carefully visits every store, every cafe, every bar in the town and settles on JOHN, a simple farmer and claims to be taken with him and in love, John's friends suspect a green card marriage. On that basis they warn the trusting, warm lonely man. But Tatiana turns out to be much more than a dishful of INS fraud; she is the very devil herself. "
See? HIGH DRAMA! A real slab of your QUICHE loaded onto a plate. The red peppers contrasting with the white cheese, all of it dripping FAT. GLORIOUS FAT! SUCCULENT, SEXY EVOCATIVE!
You gotta suck those boys into paying a reader some huge amount to 'cover' your script. So honey? 'She was a Russian' ? It just doesn't cut it. Or, imagine how JD SALINGER WOULD WRITE it. "John loved to help, to serve and frail Tatiana's life was a mess. The INS was looking for her, she was troubled and often would lie in his arms weeping. John married a needy immigrant but woke up lying alongside a poisonous spider who threatened to kill him if he didn't serve her every psychotic need."
Or, try SIDNEY SHELDON mixed with Harold Robbins: "Tatiana was blonder than any woman John had ever seen in his rural hick New England town, her voice a cat-like purr with a Russshan HISS! She looked pure angel and needy and it made his blood hot. But Tatiana didn't need a man; she needed a green card. When John marries her, the gratitude switches overnight into a terrible craziness. Soon, John was running for his life."
HIGH DRA-ma! You don't sell rubies and call them 'red rocks'. YOU SELL RED ROCKS and call them RUBIES! GET IT? SELL, hustle, create interest, pitch, heat them up. Make the producers' wheels turn!
He wrote me back that I was right and he'd change it. Then he sent me the script. It was two full fat scripts, actually, two separately bound. PART ONE and PART II with each script so thick, I'm guessing 500 pages each maybe a thousand all tolled. I was absolutely startled. They were perfectly typed, but the misspellings were everywhere. So I got that this man was persistent, self involved, low IQ, even stupid, and very longwinded. And indulgent. I wrote him back that not since STORY OF A MARRIAGE a ten hour film which Ingmar Bergman had done, about his own marriage, had any artist anywhere dared to chronicle every second of a ten year relationship! In Bergman's case, it sort of worked as a film, but after all, that is a man who's labored in theatre all his life, as had his ancestors and frankly even the Great Ingmar was downright BORING with this universal theme of a man and woman falling in love then over nine hours, out of love. ZZZZZZZZZzzz.
This young writer had taken years to write his script, years paying detectives and lawyers. Years to live it. I was not able to tell him any of this. He said he was looking for producers on his own. I left it there. So OK. I'm saving this for you. The best part. How to Be Charles Dickens
I taught screenwriting here in LA. L.A. Free Screenwriters'
Co-op. When spending so many hours a day became hazardous to my tenancy
in a house,evictions et al., slowing down became necessary in order to
make hours turn into dollars I stopped. In retrospect, I am not certain
if it's necessary to study film to write them. Because everybody alive
has seen a shitload of films. The form is under our fingernails. Probably
one would have to study the realities of the novel, and then the COMMERCIAL
novel to sell one of those. But I feel ordinary people can participate
in the 'people's art,' FLICKS. I am interested in what you think on the
subject. As for TV WRITING. Because of the many technical bases one must
hit one would probably have to study TV writing, no? What do you feel?
But it isn't necessary to study much to write good films. I used to tell
these kids "HAVING SEEN films, with your 'writer's mind, and inspirations
and aspirations, you are qualified to start DOING IT. Your unconscious
knows how to do it and much more. It has absorbed huge amts of knowledge,
keen sensibilities in its years of watching flicks. Just do it. Yes read
all the books on the subject that you can find. But trust the inner author.
He's a Pulitzer/ Nobel Prize, Oscar guy, that person within. TRUST HIM.
He is not derivative, he is not up in the head. HE is grander than any
teacher can make your brain by tweaking it, by filling pidgeon holes with
information. And that's how I began to insist on everyone trying the CHANNELING
the screenplay method which is online. HOW TO WRITE.
(click on URL here,)
With that method, --my own --by the way, --I
never heard of anyone else doing it, the writing is not done by the brain
or with the rules. It is done from the inner eye. The dream center. Only
you're awake so it's controlled dreaming with prods from the rational left
brain to the unconscious,very visual RIGHT brain to keep flooding inner
eye with pictures. The flow is automatic and easy once someone starts prodding.
Do you control your dreams? Somebody supplies infinite movies within and
it is automatic, without volition, without memory, or remembering rules
you heard. The flow is Mississippi wide, too, not a trickle. Well, you
can write films in your waking consciousness by letting just a trickle
come along that conduit. That channel deepens with use, too.
You can easily start a WRITERS CIRCLE. You will love teaching. Keep an eye open for any potential fellow writers, a good living room for a classroom. The fact that one doesn't know it all and didn't finish or graduate college won't stop you. I dropped out of UCLA Theatre Arts but when I started a living room WRITER's CO-OP, what I capitalized on was that we were all equally savvy. I called it the L.A. Free Screenwriters' Co-op. NO CHARGE. Why should any of us pay anyone else when we all had good instincts? I let everybody know I was just the senior dope and we should all add what we knew to each other's critiques. They taught, I taught, we taught each other. Very vigorous classroom technique, too. I remember how in the good acting classes, we were encouraged to critique improvs we all did. After a few years of acting classes, one developed a viewpoint. By the way, the best teachers said 'don't criticize his choices,criticize how he executed those choices."
If I were to start the Screenwriters' co-op again, what newspaper would be inexpensive for an ad? Maybe as it's the VALLEY, I should just put up posters?? This time around I'm changing the way I do it, maybe charging 5$ a session. RENTS ARE BRUTAL! And my other thought is to teach kids to produce, send them out with not only my scripts, but their buddies' scripts, contracts that share or pool the money. So producer and screen writer share...... Agent gets l0%. A communal effort! Just one flick hits, the money is enough for all of us to be out of the landlord eviction high rent problem for the rest of our lives!