In the parlance of those attending, it was Adaptation meets Dawn of the Dead. Four thousand aspiring screenwriters converging on the Los Angeles Convention Centre for the most important event in their year — the Screenwriters Expo.

Now in its fourth year, the Expo has grown into the biggest trade show for William Goldman wannabes. Every kind of screenwriting service is on sale here, from marketing consultants to script software with names like Dramatic Pro and StoryWeaver.

The centre’s lecture rooms are filled with seminars and workshops on every conceivable aspect of writing and selling a screenplay: “Cracking the Second Act”, “Vitalising Dialogue”, “Creating the Transformational Arc”.

Successful scriptwriters also attend the Expo, but only as star guests. Goldman, who won an Oscar for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, was the star guest on the last day. He’s 74 now, but when he left the podium he was mobbed like a rock star.

“It was like Elvis trying to leave the building,” said Warren Hsu Leonard, 35, a lawyer turned screenwriter. Leonard is putting the finishing touches to his script The Dream Factory, a children’s adventure fantasy about an orphan girl who has to save the world’s dreams from a nightmare-dispensing villain. “The Expo is the mecca for all us would-be screenwriters. It’s where we get to meet and catch up.”

Maybe next year Brian Watanabe will appear as a star guest. His script, The Rogues Gallery, is now in active development. “It’s about a company of assassins that gets downsized on the hero’s first day, so half the company has to kill the other half to keep their jobs.”

During his interview on stage, Goldman railed against the state of modern movies, blaming the rise of the constructed blockbuster at the expense of the more emotional written movie. But he scored his biggest bull’s-eye by sharing his own writing struggles. “If it was easy,” he pointed out, “everyone would do it.”

Well, judging by the Expo crowd, everyone is doing it. People had come from as far away as Australia and Poland. All ages and types — businessmen, slackers, blue-rinsed housewives — all clutching the Great American Screenplay. Every year 50,000 people register a screenplay with the Writers Guild. Every year fewer than 200 films are released by the major studios.

“Look, the odds of winning the lottery are even higher,” rationalised a Tony Soprano lookalike with a briefcase full of scripts. “But that doesn’t stop people doing it, does it?”

He was lined up for the PitchXchange, an Expo innovation where you buy the chance to pitch your idea to industry professionals. At $25 for a five-minute slot a day of pitching does not come cheap. But that didn’t deter the hopefuls with no industry contacts to speak of, ie, the ones from out of town. Every five minutes another wave of people sat down in front of the agents or producers and let rip.

Eavesdropping on the rows of babbling, hand-waving pitches offered alarming evidence that nobody at the Expo remembers that The Player was a satire. “It’s The Breakfast Club in a dog pound.” “It’s Terms of Endearment meets Rapa Nui.” “It’s Scum on a cruise ship.” (I really hope I misheard that last one.)

A camera and microphone from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno was set up to allow hopefuls to go one step further and “Pitch to America”. “Our story begins on the planet Trapunzo,” one man began. “It is a unique and magical place, efficiently run by a hierarchy of 150,000 elves . . .”

Most of those there, however, were quiet, dutiful students who scribbled pages of notes while listening to one of the Expo’s script gurus. Since the rise of Robert McKee, the guru business has exploded, hundreds of them offering their own theory and system.

The intense competition has resulted in increasingly speedy miracle cures (“Write and sell a script in two weeks”; “Make a movie in two days”) of intensifying complexity: “The 7 Essential Elements” . . . “the 22 Building Blocks” . . . “the 28 kinds of character growth”.

David Freeman, who claims to be America’s most successful script guru, was teaching a class that went “Beyond Structure”. To achieve this, one needs his trademarked technique, Emotioneering, which involves drawing something called a Character Diamond. As he explained it, each point on your hero’s diamond must have a distinct character trait: witty, brave, revolutionary, hasty, etc. “But be warned. More than four traits and your hero turns to mush.”

Perhaps the most perceptive of the gurus is Michael Hauge, the author of Writing Screenplays that Sell. He says that everyone should ask three questions about every screenplay they write:

1. What is each character desperate to achieve?

2. What makes that goal seem impossible?

3. What terrifies each character?

Looking at the Expo audience, the answers to the first two were obvious. As for the last one, one can only hope it’s not years of struggle.

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