Screenwriting : Screenwriting Tip by Maurice Vaughan

I've always found that setting new work aside for a month or five really helps with this. When the work is still fresh, it is difficult to see the flaws. Once you have stepped away and let the first blush of "Hey! I finished this!" wear off, the problems seem to just pop off the page.

I try to do that as well, Mike Romoth. Thanks for commenting.

Maurice - Absolutely agree! Writing is the easy part. It's the rewriting that's challenging. I am constantly asking myself "How can I make this better?" or "How can I make this funnier? I strive to spend several hours a day writing or rewriting my screenplays.

Yes! Here's what I fix in 99.9% of scripts I'm hired to read/help with: Check how you enter the scene and how you exit it - make sure every scene is a journey (starting in a state finishing in another). Take a look at all your actions lines, make sure they're ALL describing "visuals" (not thoughts in a character's mind, not extra explanations, not your personal opinion). Dialogues: stop at each one of them and depending on who says the line, find a very specific way of saying the same thing you wrote but with humor, sarcasm, poetry, silence, etc. At every line (action or dialogue) ask yourself "do we already know\saw this?" - be strict: if we already know the info but you insist on making it "very" clear for the reader, break that information in two; show us a peek first, then reveal something else later OR go deeper into a character's reaction/emotions to give us fresh info on that character and on what's "really" going on. Always find the most simple, short, effective way to say any phrase or line. etc etc etc. Of course there's other "upgrading tools", but those are my simple, easy go to for leveling up any script. Let me know how they work for you...(btw, Hi Maurice!)

Great job, Gilberto Villahermosa. Rewriting is the challenge.

Hi, Myriam B. Thanks for sharing that list. Other writers on here might benefit from it.

Myriam B that is spectacular advice. Thank you!

Agreed!

I know a script is made up of minor components. And like the great chef Marco Pierre White says “perfects is doing a lot of small things well”. I try to look at my film as a whole.

Glad to be a new follower! Agreed. As screenwriters we need constant self-check.

Welcome, Les. Nice to meet you. You're right about constant self-checks.

In my view, the most important thing is totality of a script, which the author has to keep in her/his eye, that is a combination of genre beats, dialogs, characters etc. So, the author is a conductor controlling and improving the dark/shrill/strident tone of each instrument. - But nowadays, there are much more screenwriters than readers. The probability to hit the jackpot in Minesota Lottery is much, much higher than earn a big money in the industry. What the screenwriters have to do, then? They should mimic transformers and transform themselve into the racehorses galoping for surprise, suspense, and Oscar.

100% agree. My short script as an example has hit 15/16 edits. There’s always something to tighten, neaten or sharpen.

I’m doing it now on my feature script.

Hello, Mark, writing is, in essence, re-writing. There must be some robotic woodpecker built into a human brain that always pecks the right hemisphere and whispers: "Change this, improve that - - -."