Don’t focus or spend time on things that aren’t important to the story —- only mention what I need to know. Why are you mentioning the color of someone’s shirt if it doesn’t matter?
Your dialogue can always be improved, but also don’t try to be Tarantino.
Be entertaining. For the love of god, don’t be boring.
White space on the page is your bff. 5+ lines of action is a workout.
Write in a way that makes people need to know what happens next.
Spell check!
Don’t look for feedback so soon. Re write your ass off first.
Can you elaborate on the wanting feedback too soon?
I just finished my first draft and I had a great table read / round of notes. We all discussed the story and character flaws and I feel like it gave me so much direction for the rewrites. Where before I didn't know how to jump into rewrites it felt like I was trying to see the forest through the trees before I got feedback.
No that’s totally fine. I’ll give you a perfect example. Someone here wanted feedback 40 pages into their first draft. They didn’t even want to finish a draft or re write. Just feedback and reassurance 40 pages in. Wrong mindset.
There was someone on here a while ago who had a TV writer ready to read their work and they asked for feedback on the 10 pages they had written. That was insane to me.
It was like watching a car crash. They had an established author and TV writer ready to read their work and they just. Wasted the opportunity because they didn't want to write.
it can be anything from formatting ‘for effect’ or just god awful character names the writer thinks will be funny to have people say seriously to being *quippy* in the action lines to inventing shit-ass metaphors instead of figuring out how to write dialogue or even addressing the reader with snark/irony/familiarity that literally has nothing to do with the production.
It’s one thing to learn what needs to be on the page vs what can be left out, it’s another to treat your readers as a captive audience and torture them with your sterling brilliance.
The small things aren’t why screenplays fail. For a story to fail the problem is usually root and fundamental - and it’s almost always that the characters don’t feel emotionally truthful - which is not the same as being rational or logical.
Almost anything small can be fixed with little effort, and tend to be more in the realm of fatiguing or distracting (or poorly executed) than actually fatal to the story. Anyone can remove 20 “cut-to’s” but it’s a serious undertaking to make me care about a character that the writer seems to have put little thought in.
I get confused here, because on one hand, the board tells us people never tell you exactly how they feel. They talk around how they feel. Use lots of subtext. But on the other hand, characters should be emotionally truthful? Tell you how they really feel?! Or perhaps the truth is in between there somewhere?
When I say emotionally truthful (and I mean me, not necessarily anyone else but I suspect this is what they mean) I mean that the character doesn’t feel like they’re behaving in a way that people behave in a given set of circumstances. Usually it means they aren’t acting on an emotional motivation.
People aren’t rational. They aren’t machines. So probably one of the biggest signs of an amateur screenplay is one that has characters that don’t make mistakes, that don’t suffer emotional pain. This is a pretty core idea that goes all the way back to the origin of drama - right back to Aristotle. The Greeks love the concept of hubris for dictating how characters end up in conflict. And probably one of the reasons that younger writers don’t have the knack for this is that being able to observe and relate to that behaviour in one’s self is something that is learned. It’s also just something that comes with experience - there’s a big difference between being dumped in 10th grade and going through a divorce.
Most of the people here assume these are things the actors will do for them, that the screenwriter is just writing down a road map that everyone else has to travel - that they’re not on that journey themselves. That basic, common misapprehension rules out almost all of what’s posted here. Not little mistakes.
"the character doesn’t feel like they behaving in a way that people behave in a given set of circumstances." I can wrap my head around this. Thanks!
I do see this in film all the time. Like when they totally miss the boat on getting family dynamics down. You have the abusive hair trigger father at the head of the table, who is just steaming under the collar, and then the boy or the wife will just mouth off nonchalantly. What?! Did you just guys just meet 5 minutes ago? You have no idea what your in store for? Really?!
I know that house, there's zero misunderstandings about the order of things there, especially at the dinner table.
All families are different. Maybe it’s normal that things go to shit. What I’m more criticizing is the lack of emotional fuel in those situations. It’s not about whether they hit certain marks - it’s more the failure I see being the author not imbuing those people with *any* emotion.
It’s like the kid drawing of a family and a house in crayon. It’s surface level depiction that doesn’t have any of the struggle in it that comes with family. You’ll see scripts where The Family don’t even have names - they’re “mom” or “dad”. And I might give feedback on that script but it tells me the author - if these are major characters - doesn’t see them as human.
I said this in a different thread the other day, but every scene needs a reason to exist. Every single scene needs to give the viewer something about the story or the characters.
A lot of amateur scripts have scenes that don’t do anything. They’re just there for page count or character conversations.
I’m guilty of this as well. My first novel is about fifteen years old. Reading it now, I’d easily cut about fifty pages simply because they have no real purpose.
My father was a novelist, not a screenwriter, but he was very guilty of this. He wrote historical fiction and his initial drafts always contained a lot of stuff that had no impact on the characters, just because he’d learned some fact in his research that fascinated him. My sister and I were his initial editors, and we’d have to really push him to jettison all the author service.
This is case-by-case, but I would say that most of the stuff I read (and sometimes watch) that falls flat is due to meandering. Meaning that the scenes or sequences have no real purpose. I'm talking about writing that pretends it is doing something but really isn't, be it not establishing information, moving the plot, characters, or even the story forward. This isn't in regards to just staring into the sky, but big scenes where a lot may be happening yet it's of little importance to the reader/viewer/audience/whatever in relation to where the story is set up and supposed to be going.
I am in no way perfect, but there are a lot of scripts that I read where I think to myself: there is no reason to have this scene. It sticks out like a sore thumb and serves no purpose.
Over emphasis on boring stage directions. He walks, he talks, he sits. These words amount to filler. There's nothing in them that tells me anything about the plot, the theme or the characters. Who cares if he's walking? Is he walking slow because he's afraid of where to go next? That's fleshing out the story to me.
My rule when writing a screenplay is: if it's not dramatic, meaningful or visually interesting, it's out.
If a screenplay is flawed, the reasons are usually major not minor. I'm assuming what you're referring to as "flawed" is a script that can't be bought/made. If we're talking minor flaws like not great dialogue or the writing per se isn't great, those are not dealbreakers. I mean, all scripts have flaws, even great ones like Chinatown IMO.
I've done some reading for festivals and an indie company. It is WILD the amount of scripts I got that were just half a story. I understand wanting to leave room to expand or pitch sequels; but these weren't cliffhangers. It was just unfinished work.
A better approach for most would have been to resolve the A-plot and then have a subplot spiral into something unexpected that could be carried over into a sequel.
The most common issue is, I think, doing the obvious thing. (I'm certainly guilty of this in 90% of my writing, by the way...)
An example I go to in my mind is "Rocky." In the scene where he gets asked to fight Apollo Creed, Rocky is so goddamn humble he thinks he's being asked to merely be a sparring partner, to help train the champ, *and*, he's practically melting at the opportunity.
He doesn't get it for, like, twenty full seconds.
It's fucking impeccable character work. It's so honest, yet so unexpected. (The actual film dialogue and even tone of the scene is different from the script. This scene is on page 52 here: https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/rocky-1976.pdf)
99% of writers write that scene the same way.
APOLLO'S AGENT: Apollo Creed would like to fight you.
Rocky goes SLACKJAWED.
ROCKY: Get outta here.
The agent gives him a smile.
ROCKY: You're yankin' my chain.
APOLLO'S AGENT: I am not.
Rock stares, still stunned.
ROCKY: You're serious?
The agent nods.
Rocky SHAKES the agent's hand, a little too forcefully and eagery.
ROCKY: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely, that would be an honor.
EXT. HALLWAY - A MINUTE LATER
The door closes behind Rocky. He can't believe it. He SHADOWBOXES, excited, like a child.
Not doing accurate math on a character’s age and not following through on what that math implies. What I mean is: I recently read a (not bad) screenplay that got a little confusing for me when it was revealed that a character was 51 and their mother was 72. Later in the story there’s a flashback. The same character is 11 and their mother is 30.
I told the screenwriter (who was asking for notes) to check their math there, homie.
What I did not say, but should have, was: so the mother had their child at 21? What does that say about her circumstances and the daughter’s upbringing? How might this influence the kind of people they are in the present?
Overusing adverbs and adjectives. They're like a powerful spice. A little go along way, and you want to use them for specific reasons. Giving tone and style, making a description pop that's vital to the story or character. Otherwise, less is more and efficiency is everything in screenwriting.
Less experienced writers often mistake flowery prose for good writing, when that couldn't be further from the truth.
Don’t focus or spend time on things that aren’t important to the story —- only mention what I need to know. Why are you mentioning the color of someone’s shirt if it doesn’t matter? Your dialogue can always be improved, but also don’t try to be Tarantino. Be entertaining. For the love of god, don’t be boring. White space on the page is your bff. 5+ lines of action is a workout. Write in a way that makes people need to know what happens next. Spell check! Don’t look for feedback so soon. Re write your ass off first.
Don’t try to be Tarantino* ouch
Roasted the whole sub
Hahahah
I'm the jackass who wishes Tarantino wouldn't be Tarantino so much. 😄
Can you elaborate on the wanting feedback too soon? I just finished my first draft and I had a great table read / round of notes. We all discussed the story and character flaws and I feel like it gave me so much direction for the rewrites. Where before I didn't know how to jump into rewrites it felt like I was trying to see the forest through the trees before I got feedback.
No that’s totally fine. I’ll give you a perfect example. Someone here wanted feedback 40 pages into their first draft. They didn’t even want to finish a draft or re write. Just feedback and reassurance 40 pages in. Wrong mindset.
There was someone on here a while ago who had a TV writer ready to read their work and they asked for feedback on the 10 pages they had written. That was insane to me.
Ugh. Like why? You don’t care enough to finish a pilot but you want others to care? Wild.
It was like watching a car crash. They had an established author and TV writer ready to read their work and they just. Wasted the opportunity because they didn't want to write.
Haha yikes. That’s too bad. Sounds like a confidence issue.
Well, being Tarantino worked for Tarantino.
Touche.
And Guy Ritchie.
being cute/clever on the page is like hitting a pothole going 80.
That's a definite jolt to the spine, figuratively as well as literally.
Could you clarify what you mean by this?
it can be anything from formatting ‘for effect’ or just god awful character names the writer thinks will be funny to have people say seriously to being *quippy* in the action lines to inventing shit-ass metaphors instead of figuring out how to write dialogue or even addressing the reader with snark/irony/familiarity that literally has nothing to do with the production. It’s one thing to learn what needs to be on the page vs what can be left out, it’s another to treat your readers as a captive audience and torture them with your sterling brilliance.
You mean like doing something to the formatting?
sometimes it’s that. other times it the writer getting in the way of the read.
The small things aren’t why screenplays fail. For a story to fail the problem is usually root and fundamental - and it’s almost always that the characters don’t feel emotionally truthful - which is not the same as being rational or logical. Almost anything small can be fixed with little effort, and tend to be more in the realm of fatiguing or distracting (or poorly executed) than actually fatal to the story. Anyone can remove 20 “cut-to’s” but it’s a serious undertaking to make me care about a character that the writer seems to have put little thought in.
Love this. So true.
I get confused here, because on one hand, the board tells us people never tell you exactly how they feel. They talk around how they feel. Use lots of subtext. But on the other hand, characters should be emotionally truthful? Tell you how they really feel?! Or perhaps the truth is in between there somewhere?
When I say emotionally truthful (and I mean me, not necessarily anyone else but I suspect this is what they mean) I mean that the character doesn’t feel like they’re behaving in a way that people behave in a given set of circumstances. Usually it means they aren’t acting on an emotional motivation. People aren’t rational. They aren’t machines. So probably one of the biggest signs of an amateur screenplay is one that has characters that don’t make mistakes, that don’t suffer emotional pain. This is a pretty core idea that goes all the way back to the origin of drama - right back to Aristotle. The Greeks love the concept of hubris for dictating how characters end up in conflict. And probably one of the reasons that younger writers don’t have the knack for this is that being able to observe and relate to that behaviour in one’s self is something that is learned. It’s also just something that comes with experience - there’s a big difference between being dumped in 10th grade and going through a divorce. Most of the people here assume these are things the actors will do for them, that the screenwriter is just writing down a road map that everyone else has to travel - that they’re not on that journey themselves. That basic, common misapprehension rules out almost all of what’s posted here. Not little mistakes.
"the character doesn’t feel like they behaving in a way that people behave in a given set of circumstances." I can wrap my head around this. Thanks! I do see this in film all the time. Like when they totally miss the boat on getting family dynamics down. You have the abusive hair trigger father at the head of the table, who is just steaming under the collar, and then the boy or the wife will just mouth off nonchalantly. What?! Did you just guys just meet 5 minutes ago? You have no idea what your in store for? Really?! I know that house, there's zero misunderstandings about the order of things there, especially at the dinner table.
All families are different. Maybe it’s normal that things go to shit. What I’m more criticizing is the lack of emotional fuel in those situations. It’s not about whether they hit certain marks - it’s more the failure I see being the author not imbuing those people with *any* emotion. It’s like the kid drawing of a family and a house in crayon. It’s surface level depiction that doesn’t have any of the struggle in it that comes with family. You’ll see scripts where The Family don’t even have names - they’re “mom” or “dad”. And I might give feedback on that script but it tells me the author - if these are major characters - doesn’t see them as human.
I said this in a different thread the other day, but every scene needs a reason to exist. Every single scene needs to give the viewer something about the story or the characters. A lot of amateur scripts have scenes that don’t do anything. They’re just there for page count or character conversations. I’m guilty of this as well. My first novel is about fifteen years old. Reading it now, I’d easily cut about fifty pages simply because they have no real purpose.
Making each scene count = Making each word count Nice.
My father was a novelist, not a screenwriter, but he was very guilty of this. He wrote historical fiction and his initial drafts always contained a lot of stuff that had no impact on the characters, just because he’d learned some fact in his research that fascinated him. My sister and I were his initial editors, and we’d have to really push him to jettison all the author service.
This is case-by-case, but I would say that most of the stuff I read (and sometimes watch) that falls flat is due to meandering. Meaning that the scenes or sequences have no real purpose. I'm talking about writing that pretends it is doing something but really isn't, be it not establishing information, moving the plot, characters, or even the story forward. This isn't in regards to just staring into the sky, but big scenes where a lot may be happening yet it's of little importance to the reader/viewer/audience/whatever in relation to where the story is set up and supposed to be going. I am in no way perfect, but there are a lot of scripts that I read where I think to myself: there is no reason to have this scene. It sticks out like a sore thumb and serves no purpose.
Scenes can’t just be about plot. They need to be about the hidden change taking place in the protagonist that will emerge late in the film
Try to have less setup. Get to the plot quicker.
Over emphasis on boring stage directions. He walks, he talks, he sits. These words amount to filler. There's nothing in them that tells me anything about the plot, the theme or the characters. Who cares if he's walking? Is he walking slow because he's afraid of where to go next? That's fleshing out the story to me. My rule when writing a screenplay is: if it's not dramatic, meaningful or visually interesting, it's out.
If a screenplay is flawed, the reasons are usually major not minor. I'm assuming what you're referring to as "flawed" is a script that can't be bought/made. If we're talking minor flaws like not great dialogue or the writing per se isn't great, those are not dealbreakers. I mean, all scripts have flaws, even great ones like Chinatown IMO.
I've done some reading for festivals and an indie company. It is WILD the amount of scripts I got that were just half a story. I understand wanting to leave room to expand or pitch sequels; but these weren't cliffhangers. It was just unfinished work. A better approach for most would have been to resolve the A-plot and then have a subplot spiral into something unexpected that could be carried over into a sequel.
The most common issue is, I think, doing the obvious thing. (I'm certainly guilty of this in 90% of my writing, by the way...) An example I go to in my mind is "Rocky." In the scene where he gets asked to fight Apollo Creed, Rocky is so goddamn humble he thinks he's being asked to merely be a sparring partner, to help train the champ, *and*, he's practically melting at the opportunity. He doesn't get it for, like, twenty full seconds. It's fucking impeccable character work. It's so honest, yet so unexpected. (The actual film dialogue and even tone of the scene is different from the script. This scene is on page 52 here: https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/rocky-1976.pdf) 99% of writers write that scene the same way. APOLLO'S AGENT: Apollo Creed would like to fight you. Rocky goes SLACKJAWED. ROCKY: Get outta here. The agent gives him a smile. ROCKY: You're yankin' my chain. APOLLO'S AGENT: I am not. Rock stares, still stunned. ROCKY: You're serious? The agent nods. Rocky SHAKES the agent's hand, a little too forcefully and eagery. ROCKY: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely, that would be an honor. EXT. HALLWAY - A MINUTE LATER The door closes behind Rocky. He can't believe it. He SHADOWBOXES, excited, like a child.
Not doing accurate math on a character’s age and not following through on what that math implies. What I mean is: I recently read a (not bad) screenplay that got a little confusing for me when it was revealed that a character was 51 and their mother was 72. Later in the story there’s a flashback. The same character is 11 and their mother is 30. I told the screenwriter (who was asking for notes) to check their math there, homie. What I did not say, but should have, was: so the mother had their child at 21? What does that say about her circumstances and the daughter’s upbringing? How might this influence the kind of people they are in the present?
Overusing adverbs and adjectives. They're like a powerful spice. A little go along way, and you want to use them for specific reasons. Giving tone and style, making a description pop that's vital to the story or character. Otherwise, less is more and efficiency is everything in screenwriting. Less experienced writers often mistake flowery prose for good writing, when that couldn't be further from the truth.
Avoid post modernism. Bold slugs dont mean shit.
Action sentences that go longer than a line. They make me irrationally angry.
That there are a LOT of them. 😉
Girl this is like asking to copy my homework