My new-ish fave quote on S32 is by William Martell: "There are no rules, only tools." All this hand-wringing over over formatting questions is so sad to me. I understand that for the true newbies, it's necessary to learn script format. However, this idea that adherence to the "rules" of format is held in higher regard than the quality of story is a false belief. Sure, if you have 30 typos on page 1, it's very likely that you will lose a reader's faith. (If you don't care about your work, why should I care?) But if you throw in a well-motivated song choice or if you use "we see" to describe the scene, we won't even notice. That's business as usual. Here's my new analogy -- When you first learned to drive a car, you're thinking about that Dept of Motor Vehicles (DMV) rule book and Driver's Ed instruction manual all the time. That's because you're unsure and inexperienced. You need a touchstone. You had to read those books to get your driver's license, and you consciously rely on them. However, once you've driven for a while, driving becomes second nature to you. You know when to brake and how far to stay behind the vehicle in front of you. You NEVER think about that DMV rule book again, right? It's the same thing with writing (and with reading scripts). Once it becomes second nature, you just cruise along, and you aren't thinking about that rule book all the time. Plus, you aren't thinking about how OTHER drivers interpret their DMV rule books. Everyone is an experienced driver, just driving along on the same streets. The rule book was only there to get you over the initial hump. I believe Martell calls it "thinking in screenplay."
Screenwriting : My new analogy - screenwriting : driving a car by Regina Lee
My new analogy - screenwriting : driving a car
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The only driver/writer who NEEDS that rule book is the brand new aspirant. Then the idea is for the practice of writing/driving to become second nature to you, so you never really need to reference the rule book again, and you get along just fine every single day without having to pull out the rule book.
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I think of it as training wheels on a bicycle - same concept. Once you can keep balance on your own, you don't need the training wheels... unless you lose your sense of balance (which often happens when you take something for granted). To use your DMV analogy - there's a point when people have been driving for so long that they stop paying attention to things and think they can eat a sandwich and put on make up and talk on their mobile phone all at the same time and all while driving 2 tons of steel hurtling at a mile per minute down the street... and that's a car wreck waiting to happen. New writers and writers with too much experience should think about the rules (well, tools).
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I think we're scared that initially we'll get a very particular reader who throws our scripts out and we're never taken seriously again. I know this is very extreme but we all hear the numbers and know how tough it is. Yes there aren't really "rules" but it seems there are many expectations and there's now way to know who's getting our script and where they stand as sticklers for these rules
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William M, thank you for taking the time to add to the post. Much appreciated.
Great analogy! When I learned to drive I told my dad's friend I was having a hard time knowing where the right side of the car was. He said, "You just take care of the left side, the right side will take care of itself". :)