Joe Eszterhas, the screenwriter behind Flashdance, Basic Instinct, and Showgirls, presents a tongue-in-cheek look at screenwriting in The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood: The Screenwriter as God! that is part autobiography and part Rough Guide.

Eszterhas shares his tips about surviving Hollywood in acerbic, bite-sized paragraphs that unabashedly praise the people he loves and mercilessly rip into those he loathes, while offering some gruff but friendly advice to both working and wannabe screenwriters.

Here are just a handful of tips I thought I’d share:

Cover yourself.
“Before each sex scene, write: ‘It is dark; you can’t see clearly.’ (Do this) just in case the director wants to shoot your script as NC-17 or ‘a deep R’… and blames you for pornography if the movie fails.”

Use the three beat.
“Three lines of dialogue - the last line (the three beat) pays the first line off.”

Shut the world down.
“I have found that for me, the best time to write is from seven in the morning till one o’clock in the afternoon. I get up at six, shower, drink some carrot juice and tea, and am at my writing desk by seven. I don’t take calls when I’m writing: my wife only disturbs me for emergencies.”

Write six pages of script a day.
“Stick to this schedule no matter what. You’ll have a finished first draft in roughly twenty days. Then go back and edit what you’ve written. Spend no more than five days on this edit.

Then rewrite your script from page one - with your edits. Spend no more than one week on this rewrite - that means twenty pages a day. Put the script away for a week; don’t even look at it. Then edit it once again. Spend no more than four days on the edit this time.

Then rewrite it again from scratch with your edits - taking another week. This will be your third draft. Now begin the process of trying to sell it - this, your official first draft.”

Screenwriter David Goyer discusses his attraction to darker themes and conflicted characters in The Dialogue: Learning from the Masters, a DVD I recently picked up given I really enjoyed his work on films such as Blade and the very creepy Dark City.

While this series seems to be aimed at more novice writers, there are still some notable tidbits, especially if you’re planning on writing a comic book adaptation:

“You have to be very careful about what you choose to change and not change. The (films in this genre that haven’t been) successful veer away too much from the source material,” says Goyer, who adds that one can get away with a lot more by adapting lesser-known properties, such as Blade.

The writer of this summer’s Batman sequel, The Dark Knight, also talks about his experiences working on a number of blockbusters (Batman Begins), as well as a some of the more forgettable projects (Death Warrant, Demonic Toys) he took on to break into this business early on in his career.

He also discusses the importance of creating your own discipline (when it comes to finding a fixed time to write), the advantages of cannibalizing your own unproduced work for inclusion into a current project, and the need to outline:

“The few times I’ve tried to dive in I’ve become hopelessly lost around page 40 and just fall into despair. I usually write a 30-page outline.”

Welcome to Sophisticated Hokum.

Aside from acting as a showcase for my work, think of this website and blog as a virtual notebook where I will record anything interesting or useful that I encounter.

If you are new to writing and are looking for information about breaking into journalism or magazine writing, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. I am more than happy to share my professional experience in this area with you, and may even post your answer for other wannabe writers to see.

For those who know me personally, check out my ballyhoo category to see what I’m up to and where I’ve recently been published. If you don’t know me personally, don’t be shy and introduce yourself.

And in case you were wondering, Sophisticated Hokum stems from the critique a story analyst at Warner Bros. gave to an unproduced play called Everybody Comes to Rick’s back in 1940. The analyst described it as an “excellent melodrama” and “sophisticated hokum”, and suggested the studio purchase it at once. That play became the basis for Casablanca, one of the best movies ever written.