First off, congratulations on your writing success. While I am certainly not a fan of so-called screenwriting ‘rules’ and consistently promote the idea that we should be free to tell a story the way it can best be told, supposed rules be damned, I continue to hear from writers who are not yet established in the business how their scripts get dinged by script readers for including specific song titles and lyrics. It may feel “anachronistic,” but it is apparently still a ‘thing’ for those trying to break in, albeit a minor concern.
As your comments suggest, established working screenwriters don’t have to worry about this. Great! Indeed, maybe that attitude is drifting down into the consciousness of script readers and their coverage of scripts written by non-pro writers.
As I noted in my response to the question, written in 2012 (!): “There may be occasions where your story absolutely needs a specific song, tied to plot or maybe a theme. If you really believe you have to include that title in your script to tell your story, then you should feel free to do it.”
Note: You should feel free to do it.
My advice, nearly a decade ago, was to make aspiring screenwriters aware of financial and business considerations involved in including specific songs in their script… that there was a perspective among script readers where they would ding a script if it included song titles… but if they had a song with lyrics which worked really well in elevating the story experience, notwithstanding convention — among script readers — they should follow their creative instincts and include it.
Gregory, I very much appreciate you sharing your experience. Hopefully, the influence of ‘script literalists’ with their various so-called ‘rules’ will continue to abate in influence and writers, whether inside the business or out, can be free to do whatever they hell they need to do to best tell their story in script form.
To put this discussion into a broader context, if you haven’t read my series on So-Called Screenwriting ‘Rules,’ it might be of interest.
Continued good luck with your creative endeavors!
