Fix This - 10.6.24

Whether you're writing a script you plan to make yourself or you're working on a spec you hope to sell, good writing is critical to a good screenplay. You can have a great plot, but if the writing is bad, you're in trouble.

Spend time developing your unique voice and make sure you're not committing common screenwriting mistakes like the one in the scene below.

Can you point to the part that needs to be rewritten?

There’s a lot of strong scene description here. It’s clear the character is upset by the way she’s acting. Most of these sentences give the actor direction and the emotion will be clear to the audience when they see it on screen.

But there’s one little problem… “Assuming.”

Assuming is something that happens inside a character’s head. Although the camera will be able to show us that Sarah’s unhappy, someone sitting in a theater won’t know why.

To make her thoughts filmable, we need a line of dialogue…

In the new version, we understand what’s going on in Sarah’s mind.

Check your script for words like “assumes”, “realizes”, “remembers”, and “thinks.” Are there places you need to make your characters inner thoughts clearer?

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