Breaking & Entering: Want To Boost Your Writing? Stop Doing These 7 Things Immediately!

There's no scarcity of advice on how to write a screenplay. Plenty of folks are telling you what to do. From the current "guru," to the well-intentioned folks in your writers' group. From studying classic films, to YouTube and TikTok videos. But I'm contrarian and thought it would be refreshing and fun to share what not to do. 

As an executive, as a producer, and as a consultant, my first job has always been to help writers develop the best possible version of their script, to get their stories told. As everyone is different, I always change my approach to match the writer. Some writers need to read in the genre, some writers need to rework from the ground up, some writers need to polish and hone to elevate their writing. 

But I often find self-inflicted wounds and unforced errors. Whether adherents of conventional wisdom that is wrong, or simply stuck in their ways, I’ve seen these so many times that I want to force the writer to pull over and just “STOP!” 

Save some bucks on consulting, or coverage, or contests, and cut these red flags out of your script, out of your writing process, and out of what you’ve been told to believe. 

You will up your game, and become a more productive, more impressive, and happier writer!

Tightening is great.

Saying more with less is fantastic. 

But leave the pruning job for later. 

Get it working first. 

Get it to a real First Draft, not merely your first draft. Up to that point, it is not the time to follow The Rules of Page Count According to Anyone. 

Only then, start trimming and tightening. 

Is it significant to the story? Is it essential to understanding the character? Does it convey the essence of the setting? Would we miss it if it’s cut? 

Aim for more impact with less words.

Find out what the industry really thinks in “Does Page Count Count?”

This is a hill I’m apparently going to die on. 

Slugs should be simple. 

Their primary purpose is for preproduction. It allows the Unit Production Manager to determine the budget by creating a shooting schedule. 

Scripts are almost never shot in sequence. Scenes in the same setting will be shot together as it saves time, and thus money, that would be required to move the cast, crew, and equipment. Interiors are shot separately than exteriors, where DAY versus NIGHT really matters in terms of lighting, not to mention the toll it would take on cast and crew to change back and forth between shooting days and shooting nights rather than making a single shift in their sleeping schedule.

For that reason, readers tend to pay minimal attention to them. We expect that if there is something significant to know about the setting, time of day, or even the weather, you’ll tell us about it in the description.

Read my 10000% proof positive that this is true based on a really life spec sale here.

The longer you work on a script, the harder it is to have perspective. Ultimately, the bright shiny premise you chose becomes so familiar that it's easy to lose confidence in the concept. It's no longer as exciting to you. This leads to adding more elements. Aliens! Mobsters! Explosions! Long ago, I decided to call this “Too Much Tinsel on Your Tree.” Heaping decoration atop a perfectly good story is not a solution.

In a mini-consult with a new writer, I was left guessing as to well, everything! The world, the characters, and the plot. All the elements were complex, abstract, and vague. Simplify and clarify.

A former industry exec, ever articulate about story had a premise I adored, really smart, with great characters and solid twists. Suddenly there were drugs, cartels, and dead bodies everywhere.

Along the way, these writers lost faith in what drew them to their story in the first place. Even studios can fall prey to this trap during the development process.

As is often said in the industry, “A movie is a simple story complexly told.” Adding more external conflict crowds out character development and character-driven conflict.

Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3, Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens From: “’Closet screenwriter' Arndt comes into light,” The Hollywood Reporter by Anne Thompson

Believe in your premise; don’t bury it.

Screenwriting is its own specific language. 

Unlike novelists, your writing must be cinematic. 

Simply put, that means visual and visceral:

What we see when we see it.

Active present tense always.

Showing not telling.

Choose evocative words.

Discover how to pull off the occasional, perfect "deft cheat," and everything else you need to know about crafting cinematic description in “See Spot. See Spot run. Mastering the Art of Description.”

You probably recall something from high school science class along the lines of, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This is actually Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion, nicknamed Action/Reaction. It is the essence of subtext. Mastering this concept can elevate your writing.

Something just happened: Another character said something loving, or cruel, or unexpected. A Pop-Tart popped. A bomb went off. How does your character react?

For every emotion-provoking action there must be a reaction from your primary characters. If not, your characters feel flat, as does the scene, as does your story.

I’ve written more about what subtext is and why it enriches your writing plus how to use subtext to impress and engage readers leading to becoming a writer that industry players want to know. You can also watch here:

The Page-One Rewrite is so deeply ingrained that in order to persuade you, I’ll make multiple arguments against it.

1) Can this script be saved?

Is your story so far from working that it needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the foundation up? This one hurts, but if you’re rewriting something where the fundamental premise isn’t playing out effectively and compellingly, you may be able to make it a bit “more better,” but you’re pouring your time, energy, and creative juice down the drain.

I put a lot of emphasis on foundation first, as it needs to be in place and rock solid to hold up the entire story. You can find the method I use with my writers here, at the bottom of the page. Once you’ve conquered that, it informs every choice you make. The secret to creating strong stories is to dig deep to lay a solid foundation before building up structure that it must support.

2) Can this script be sold?

What I mean by “sold” is are you putting your energy into a concept that cannot attract industry attention? An idea that cannot be pitched or queried? A premise that won’t intrigue readers from a logline? Something one person can readily tell to another person and persuade them to read it? Because your goal should be to get read. That leads to building fans, developing relationships, and getting recommended to reps. Which launches careers.

One of my earliest, and favorite ScriptMag columns was “Does Your Execution Suffer From E.D.?” All about discovering if your stories have succumbed to Execution Dependence and what to do about it that doesn’t involve a little blue pill. Execution Dependent scripts are notoriously challenging to get right, and then even more difficult to get read because the deliciousness is in the details.

3) Can this script keep going?

This script gets off to a good start because you’ve put so much energy into the opening because of all those Page-One Rewrites, but lacks the momentum to pull us through the script wanting to know “What will happen next?” By the time you’ve arrived at the challenges of the middle, you’re exhausted or out of fresh ideas.

When my consulting clients have a draft that is getting close – nearly ready to go to my “Fresh Set of Eyes Retired Agent Freebie” for blunt but to the point fee feedback – often we will focus on just a scene or sequence that needs work. When that’s firing on all cylinders, we take one more pass for anything that can be tightened or needs to be bumped up, any sentences that can flow better for a smoother read, input those tweaks, and we’re good to go.

What to do instead of the Page-One Rewrite: Switch to the “Just one thing rewrite.”

In focusing on one aspect of your script, from reading the dialogue only, to a scene-by-scene pass, to the backwards pass, you can gain more ground and up your game more effectively than starting at Fade In. This hyper-focus, whether to ensure character’s voices are so clear that we don’t even need to read their names, enter scenes late and exit on a solid button, ensure you’re not force feeding us exposition or even to catch the typos our brains automatically fix and formatting errors that slip through the cracks, this new concept of rewriting reaps lots of rewards. Read about how to have more energy and more impact in “The ‘Just One Thing’ Rewrite.”

While there are some top-tier contests that include feedback, sending your material off to unknown readers in coverage services means you might not even get what you pay for. In fact, you have no idea whose opinion you’re paying for. 

And I’m not even accounting for the things I’ve read in online writers’ groups where AI seems to be the “reader.” 

I’ve told the story of the client who paid for three sets of coverage from a service, only to be left both baffled and significantly out of pocket. Each was a single page, a fill-in-the-blank form, with scores for each category, likely in exchange for an insignificant amount of pay.

The writer asked me to evaluate and interpret the feedback. He was concerned that two out of three readers missed the sub-genre completely. It was pretty much Goldilocks and the Three Bears. One reader was very, very green. One reader offered up a comment worth addressing to add clarity. And the last reader had experience that showed in their vocabulary and language, so we gave more serious consideration to their comments. From there we got creative, but in a way that was true to the story and characters.

Now the script has a producer, a distributor, and an A-list director!

Wishing you and your stories a happily ever after!