Most Underrated Form*

For just over a decade I called myself a screenwriter, and it was true. That was my medium. I wrote screenplays, and some damn good ones. A couple entered into production and stalled. Most languished in my filing cabinet (as they do with all screenwriters; more on that later), but eventually I took a couple of my best shorts and did something that just isn't done — I published them in a collection of short fiction.

That act wasn't one of desperation; it was a declaration that had long been building towards eruption. The declaration? That screenwriting is as valid a form of storytelling as any other form of drama, and that it deserves a readership just as much as its eventual production deserves a viewership.

Some of the best stories I've ever read are the unproduced screenplays of my friends and colleagues. Every screenwriter has a log jam of unproduced work, and as the screenwriting and film worlds stand, you the reader will never see these stories. You won't see them on screen because they probably don't fit the blueprint of a time-tested money-making film. Movie companies want a sure thing, and the great stories of the screenwriters are not sure money makers. Movie companies will look at a dramatic screenplay, for instance, and they will say things like: "There's not enough action," or "Can you add a policeman?" or "You're spending too much time on character," or "You need to have him say something catchy," or "No one is going to like that ending. It's too dark," and any of a million other things that producers think will keep viewers away. So those screenplays that put more emphasis on character, or have realistically dark endings, or stay away from the clichés of popular (and lazy) culture, or have characters who speak naturally rather than in sound-bytes, those screenplays go nowhere.

For instance, former Navy Seal Chuck Pfarrer — a successful screenwriter — is famous for his action screenplays like The Jackal, Navy Seals and Red Planet (a screenplay whose initial strengths were terminally compromised by the producers). But his best work, his dramatic work, remains unproduced. It sits unwanted up on his bookshelf. It's never going anywhere. It happens to all screenwriters. And you, the consumer, never know.

So for nearly twenty years, I've wanted to bring unproduced screenplays to the reader. Not just my own, but the screenplays of all the screenwriters I know and don't know. I believe there is a massive, untapped readership for these original screenplays. A readership that doesn't even know it is out there waiting for the best stories of the screenwriters written in screenplay form. 

The form may look odd to readers at first, yet as consumers of visual media we all have the tools to read and understand screenwriting. It is there inside every reader, and all they need to do is pick up a screenplay, preferably an unproduced screenplay and start reading. 

I stopped calling myself a screenwriter a few years back. These days I call myself, very simply, a writer. But I love screenwriting. I love screenwriters. I love screenplays, and in a year or so I will be publishing an unproduced feature length screenplay of my own. It will be my second baby step towards bringing screenwriting to readers. I'll toddle along for a while, then maybe I can actually walk. If you're a screenwriter out there, why not toddle along with me? 

*Yeah, yeah … it was supposed to be most underrated book, but I decided to switch it up.