File this under rant. I just read a batch of new playscripts that annoyed the hell out of me. In recent years I have helped a couple of theatre companies by reading new scripts as a volunteer. Many theatre companies, particularly the small and nonprofit, rely on an informal pool of trusted readers to help them review submissions.
Fresh scripts are judged at two levels – basic use of English (sorry, I’m not reading Spanish, Polish or Greek scripts), and then at the level of dramaturgy – character development, plot structure, dialog, motivation, those sorts of things. Most of the scripts I just read don’t even meet the most rudimentary standard of the first level. Misspellings are common as rain here in Seattle in February. At least half the scripts confuse “your” and “you’re,” “its” and “it’s,” and “to” and “too.” The possessive case and subject-verb agreement are often mangled. Come on, guys! What were you doing in high school English? It’d be one thing if this writing was by those who want a career driving a forklift, but this stuff is submitted by people who say they’re writers.
(And don’t think this problem is restricted to stage plays. Friends in L.A. who have done script coverage – Hollywood-speak for reading screenplays – tell me the same problems infect scripts there.)
Over the last month America’s declining educational performance has received a lot of press, stimulated in part by Amy Chua’s controversial new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. One respected international survey recently found that students from the U.S. came in seventeenth in reading, twenty-third in science and thirty-first in math. Children from Shanghai ranked first in every category. Please, next time give me scripts from Shanghai. If the grasp of English I just choked down with these scripts is superior to most English usage in our country, we are in really bad shape. And if we’re even worse at science and math, do not let me fly in a plane designed by future American engineers.
Perhaps the authors of these scripts think that readers will recognize artistic brilliance underneath their butchery of language. Nuh-uh, think again. A relentless wave of scripts swamps theatres, contests and agents. Those scripts with good English usage (acceptable script formatting also helps), let alone those that demonstrate actual storytelling talent, will make yours seem unworthy even of the recycling bin.
Small nonprofit theatres and workshops struggle mightily to muster the resources to support new play development. Their consideration of your script is an act of devotion to theatre. Submitting sloppy scripts is an abuse of their precious devotion and an insult to the profession you want to join.
You’re a lousy editor? That’s okay, lots of writers are. Just have enough smarts to recognize that. Go find a friend with a sharp eye and beg for a favor. Failing that, locate a professional copy editor and pay her to clean up your work.
Your sloppy script not only demonstrates ignorance or, even worse, laziness, it also indicts you as talentless. Here’s why. A reader who sees that you don’t know or care about the difference between your and you’re will doubt that you can distinguish between love and lust, vengeance and justice, eccentricity and madness, desire and obsession, or any of the countless other mysteries of human existence that writers concern themselves with.
P.S. Okay, now I feel better. Plus I just figured out why David Mamet writes all those ranting essays. They operate as a purgative.
