Chemistry between characters needs to be built. It is not enough that they are both attractive. It is not enough that they snark at each other. Real chemistry is built in the moments when they admire each other. They don’t have to do it out loud. If you don’t carefully and deliberately build the chemistry,…
Read moreIT’S A PERIOD DRAMA
TENSION
Letting tension out in the script happens when conflicts are resolved too soon. It happens in scenes with two or three lines of wrap up dialogue that should be cut. You lose momentum when you let out tension. Keep the tension rising in your script by giving your protag more problems instead of solving them….
Read moreFINISH IT. Actually finishing it is what I’m gonna put in as step one. You may laugh at this, but it’s true. I have so many friends who have written two-thirds of a screenplay, and then re-written it for about three years. Finishing a screenplay is first of all truly difficult, and secondly really liberating….
Read moreIS IT A SCRIPT AT ALL?
It might be a novel or a short story or a painting or a collage or a poem. You might have a script idea if: It’s about a person who needs to accomplish something difficult. The person has a flaw that gets in the way. Strong forces oppose them. The story and its themes are…
Read moreNOTE RAGE
When you get a lot of unencouraging feedback, you have written a script that doesn’t work yet, like every single other person who has ever tried to write one. Is it a script? Then it’s a mess. It is packed with blind spots and missed opportunities that you will never know about until someone else…
Read morePHONETIC DIALECT IS A PAIN IN THE ASS TO READ
Great dialect adds a lot to your script, unless you spell it the way it sounds, in which case it’s very annoying because it stops being reading and turns into breaking code. Go easy on the apostrophes, darlin’. I’s fixin’ ta gin y’all a whuppin’ iff’n ya don’t.
Read moreYOUR THIRD ACT REFUSING TO PAY OFF THE SETUP
Notes from a Screenreader: The Deep Freeze Script
Notes from a Screenreader: The Deep Freeze Script nywift: Photo via Go Into the Story. Scripts that feel rote turn readers off right away even though rote scripts are written by people who know exactly what they’re doing. The plot moves forward, the conflicts are in place, the beats come and go like clockwork. Scoring…
Read moreKEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS
Avoid giving your characters speeches about their feelings in the first act. You can show their feelings in what they do, but conversations about their feels and why they feel that way in the setup are boring. There is so much time in the second act to do this work, after we care. It’s not…
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