available at writersconference.com

LONG BEFORE A MOVIE makes it to the screen, before the cameras roll and before the stars are cast, there first comes the script.

Across its stark face it measures 8 1/2" x 11" and in feature form yields about a pound of pages. Pick it up and it flops lazily in hand, bound by a couple, three tin brads and distinguished only by the title and author's name on the front cover. Resembling tens of thousands of other scripts, its back is blank. Inscribed between the covers is an unseemly confection of incongruous rules and mysterious structure which, possibly more than the tale of the characters who reside there, conspires to affirm the worth of the author with dignity, celebrity and riches untold; a rippling sheaf of thin timber that page after lackluster page attempts to resonate the incalculable value of the writer by dispelling from those who read it, the suspicion that a quiet desperation underscores every word.

It's sometimes difficult to reason why one writes a screenplay. The motives are numerous, many personal. What binds them all, I suspect, is an unflagging need to communicate to others the great movie in our mind we're convinced will translate into imaginative cinema. Frankly, if you want to make a good movie, write a book.

When first I began the "Prognosis" series a few years ago for the Film & Video Artists Association of San Diego (FAVAA), the audience was primarily independent filmmakers. Here in its new form, the readers are writers. But what I'll be talking about each month will not be a "How To..."--innumerable books already claim privy to that ever contradictory conundrum. Many are invaluable. Most, otherwise. No, consider this instead to be collection of personal observations, theorems, opinions and factoids deemed useful for anyone practicing the art & craft of writing screenplays for market. Consider this, if you will, more of a "Have To..."

There are many considerations when one sets out to write a script: Is it more suitable for a network television movie-of- the-week than it is a feature? Would cable be the best approach? Should I put in act breaks? Do I even have a story worth writing? Has it already been done better than I can do it? Has it been done too much? Would it just make a better Seinfield episode? Why bother? Who do I send it to? Where do I start? Why won't somebody listen to me?

Unfortunately, finding someone who can provide the answers, through authoritative evaluation based on empirical knowledge, isn't as easy when it comes to writing screenplays. For those unaccustomed, reading a script is a less pleasurable task than reading a manuscript of your book, say. Or tearing away a thick shard of bloody cuticle from a corner of their big toe. Consequently, the feedback you do receive, albeit earnest in its effort, is often tainted by a lack of understanding of the craft itself and the artform as a whole.

What, then, do you do? To whom, then, do you turn? Not easy questions to answer. There are workshops around town. There are people you can pay a couple-hundred dollars to critique your script. And, of course, there are the cryptic rejections that accompany your script home from wherever you've submitted it.

But what is going to give you the insight to determine what is wrong with your script--assuming anything is--and how to fix it? What will aide you into absolute certainty of selling your wares?

There are so many tools out there, so many books and opinions. So many success stories which defy the axiom. There's networking and there's the Internet. There's agents who can't tell you what they're looking for, and development executives who tell only what they're not. There's software and speakers. There's conferences and consultants. And on the fringe of it all, bolstering the bank books of everyone involved, there ultimately is you. And the absolutely definitive, bestest representative of your skills is inevitably your script. And often what undermines another's ability to discover the talent reflected there is you.

You and your script are what we'll talk about here. Next month, for instance, we'll get into workshops and cold readings and what you really have to consider when going to others in search of feedback, 'cause it's a fundamentally different ordeal with a script than it is with straight prose. One of the reasons is because there is no single right way to write one. Only an infinite number of wrong ways.

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