Originally written on Raindance.org, this is exactly where I'm sitting with my screenplay. I thought it'd be helpful to share with others as well.
1. Remember: The first draft of anything is shit
I’m quoting Ernest Hemingway here. And when asked about rewriting, he
answered that he rewrote the ending to “A Farewell to Arms” thirty-nine
times before he was satisfied. Unfortunately, oftentimes new writers
believe that their first draft is gold and that it will only take a
little bit of fixing before it rocks. They naively assume they’ll just
need to improve lines of dialogue, transitions, or formatting errors.
They hand me their babies thinking it has a cold, but most of the time
it turns out it has a bad case a pneumonia and needs more than a
spoonful of cough syrup to get it back on its feet. In fact, their
script often needs a total RE-STRUCTURING of the plot. There is a great
French word, RESTRUCTURATION, which has a better ring to it than
“re-structuring” and is sadly missing from the English vocabulary!
2. Accept that bruises to your ego are part of the process
The problem is, as soon as I prescribe a “RESTRUCTURATION” of their
script, many new writers go into panic mode: they just can’t picture
themselves re-building the wobbly castle they took so long assembling.
Or their ego is so wounded they bury their script six feet under the
earth and prepare the noose and chair for a hanging. Which is a shame
because most of my literary patients have something in them that is
worth saying and saving. Believe me, I have been there many times. When I
was honing my craft at UCLA, I freaked out when a screenwriting
professor ripped apart a script I had sweated over for two years. It
takes eating large portions of humble pie to become a professional
writer and get the best out of your story and characters. It’ll never
stop wounding our egos, it’s only human nature, and it’s okay. Go to the
gym, go for a walk, sulk for a few days, do whatever you need to do to
get past your disappointment. But at some point you need to roll up your
sleeves and get back to developing your screenplay.
3. Stop putting pressure on yourself
Too many new writers want to have their script completed by
Christmas, or for a looming competition deadline. Giving yourself a
deadline for each rewrite is a healthy thing to do (I always give myself
deadlines) but the truth is you never know how many drafts you’ll need
before a script is rock solid and there is no point in sending a
half-baked script to a competition. Just accept that some scripts take
more time to develop than others. After all, if took a decade for Darren
Aronofsky and his writing team to hone “Black Swan.” Similarly,
Christopher Nolan spent ten years developing “Inception” before it was a
shooting script. Originally, “Inception” was a mere heist story and
it’s only when C. Nolan threw the Marion Cotillard character into the
mix that the script truly came together.
The less experienced you are the more time it might take to complete
your script. So unless you’re being commissioned to write a script and
you have a REAL hard deadline to meet, relax and enjoy the process. And
besides, developing your script, aside from it being necessary to get it
sold/optioned/placed in a competition, etc., is good practice because
the horrid reality is that once it’s good enough to land a producer,
actor, agent, financier, etc., then it’ll be regarded as draft 1 from
that point on – and then you’ll need to start incorporating other
people’s notes, producers, directors, actors, etc., which means your ego
and your script are going to be challenged again and again and again.
The more you get used to this and accept it as part of the process, the
closer you are to becoming a professional writer.
4. Re-outline your screenplay
Proceed methodically. Don’t dive in blindly into your script as it’s a
sure-fire way to hit a wall and get lost. Instead, step back from your
screenplay and re-outline your story. A script is like a house and you
can’t build it if the foundations aren’t rock solid.
First write a
ONE-PAGER
delineating the 3 acts of your script. On the back of the page, write
down your protagonist’s outer goal, inner goal/need as well as their
transformational arc (and if this terminology is alien to you I urge you
to buy a screenwriting book ASAP!). Then, turn your one-pager into a
4-PAGER, with one page for Act 1, two pages for Act 2, one page for Act
3. Workshop your 4 pager, read it to your friends, etc. until it’s rock
solid, and then, and only then, turn it into a treatment.
TREATMENTS
are usually 10-12 pages but can be up to a hundred pages if you detail
every beat, scene, etc. In any case it’s a prose version of your story.
Before commencing with the screenplay format, some people then write
their treatment into a
STEP-OUTLINE
(also known as a Beat Sheet), meaning a description of the content of
each scene. Others feel it impedes their creativity and skip that step,
which is absolutely fine.
5. Don’t be stubborn
Many new writers scream out “No way, I’m not going back to square
one!” They are scared their beautiful words and witty dialogue will go
down the drain. So they haphazardly toy around with their script, add
and remove lines of dialogue and shuffle up their scenes in the hope the
script will come together in the end. I’m not saying that strategy
never works, but in my experience – I’ve read hundreds of scripts for
film and TV over the years – it seldom does work because for most
writers and their screenplays it doesn’t solve the problems in the
script. You have to take it apart and carefully reconstruct it. And it’s
a lot easier to do that with a one page document, and then a four pager
document, etc.
I hate it when a writer comes back to me one year after I script
doctored their work, admitting they tampered with their script without a
roadmap, got lost, and now they need me to help them re-outline their
story from the beginning. What a waste of time! I much prefer when
writers devote their energy rewriting their outline for a few weeks or
months until it’s structurally sound and come back with a solid new
draft the next time around. You know why? Because then we can move on to
the fun stuff like dialogue, visual transitions, motifs, imagery;
things that are a lot easier to fix once the house is properly
constructed so to speak. I liken this step in the development process to
choosing the color of paint for the walls in your home, the style of
carpet, the fabric for the curtains, etc., meaning you wouldn’t and
shouldn’t do this until the foundations, walls, roof, number of
bedrooms, style of kitchen, etc. have all been designed well and
properly constructed – then you can do the finishing touches to your
home/script.
6. Find the tools that work for you
If you struggle with structure, I’d encourage you to use a structural template. The
BEAT SHEET provided in Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat” works great (by the way, if you haven’t read his book get is asap!), the
Hal Ackerman SCENOGRAM
is a fine tool as well, but there are other ones out there that can
prove just as helpful. Make charts if you like charts, use 3 x 5 cards,
highlighters, whatever works for you. Develop your own tools, but by all
means don’t jump in blind to rewrite or restructure your script.
I can’t yell it loud enough, RE-OUTLINING is an effective treatment
against wobbly structures. Re-outlining might save you months, if not
years of your life as a screenwriter. And no matter how badly
side-tracked you were when you wrote the first draft it’s never a waste
of time to go through the process of “restructuration.” Even if you
bungled your story structure or picked the wrong protagonist (which
happens in a lot of scripts I read), things will fall back into place if
there is some method to the madness of developing screenplays. The
essence of your script, the diamond in the rough will eventually jump
out at you and make itself clear. Make no mistake, writing is a
difficult, long process. It takes a lot of hard work, frustration and
floundering around. And if you don’t believe me, here are a few words by
John Irving for you to ponder:
“More than a half, maybe as much as two thirds of my life
as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn’t say I have a talent that’s
special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina.”
As E.B. White said in “The Elements of Style”, “The best writing is rewriting.”
Or as I like to say, the best writing is re-outlining. Happy “Restructuration!”
