Screenwriting : Can You Overwrite Your Spec Screenplay? by Phillip E. Hardy, "The Real Deal"

When I had been writing scripts for about a year, I met a person online at the now defunct Trigger Street Labs. We exchanged scripts and I gave him an early draft of a screenplay he hated and savaged for all the rules I had broken. I informed him it was a first draft and he was appalled that I even gave it to him to read. Fair enough. He sent me a script that had won a contest and when I asked him how many drafts he had written, he told me forty. About five months later, the script I had exchanged with my fellow reader placed at the Screencraft, action contest along with two other scripts I had recently written. A few days later, Screencraft interviewed me about my unconventional approach that helped me get three placements in their contest. Within a few months, this same screenplay also placed at two other contests.

The philosophy of rewriting is writing is accepted by throngs of screenwriters. Nowadays, I use the Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Junior method of writing and polishing as I go along and then rewrite and edit a second draft. I have also written as many as four drafts for scripts that have been optioned. Typically, I never write more than two drafts for spec screenplays that are not optioned. However, I have revisited several (not optioned) spec scripts multiple times and added and edited things over the years. But the thought of doing forty or even ten drafts of a screenplay seems ludicrous to me unless it was for a major film project with lots of money at stake.

IMHO, I think one can easily overwrite their screenplays based on professional and peer feedback and distill the creativity out of their work. By the way, Earnest Hemingway didn’t say “The first draft of anything is shit.” But even if that’s true, I’ve read scripts with multiple rewrites that are also pretty heinous. So I don’t think you can put a rewrite number on what it takes to generate an original, creative work.

What say you forum dwellers? Lay it on me!