Your Rewrite: 3 Angles of Attack
by William M. Akers
“The first draft of everything is shit.”
-Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway, charming as ever, was correct. Everybody’s first draft is shit. Even his. Yours too! You have to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite until you nail it. Then you stop. The good news is, you can fix just about anything. […]
John August: Writing better action
Screencast lesson from screenwriter John August on writing better action beats. More info can be found at johnaugust.com.
John August: Entering a scene
Screencast lesson from screenwriter John August on how to enter a scene with more impact. More info can be found at johnaugust.com.
Writing better scene descriptions
Screenwriter John August works through a scene to improve the scene description. You learn much more about screenwriting at johnaugust.com.
Excerpt from “Your Screenplay Sucks!: 100 Ways to Make it Great”
by William M. Akers
I’ve been doing exactly what you do, writing, for a long, long time. I’ve taught and critiqued screenwriters for almost that long, and, lo and behold, I discovered that all beginning writers make the same mistakes. So I wrote a book, a checklist of stuff to do […]
Screenwriting: Lean and Mean
Using Reverse Cause and Effect to Construct a Tight Script
by Jeff Kitchen
The work of the amateur screenwriter is often characterized by the Unnecessary. Dialogue and description are often overdone, scenes tend to be overwritten, acts are bloated, and so on. You may have entire scenes that are unnecessary, perhaps even […]
Scenes to Cut, Those to Save
by Martha Alderson, M.A.
Most writers end up writing at least twice as many scenes as needed to produce a compelling story. One skill that defines a good writer is the ability to know which scenes to keep and which ones to kill off. As a plot consultant, I developed two […]
How Do I Critique My Own Work?
by Leigh Michaels
Can writers take a long honest look at their own writing? The answer is yes, but it’s difficult. When we go back to read the words we’ve put on the page, we not only read the actual words, we relive the emotions we felt as we were writing. […]
Paring Down your Script
by Paul Chitlik
I can absolutely guarantee you, based on more than twenty years experience, that the second thing a reader (be she a script reader, development exec, agent, producer, or studio head) will do when she gets your script, is thumb through to the end to see what the page […]
Writing is Rewriting
by Derek Rydall
As a screenwriter, you may use other script consultants to critique your material, but inevitably you’ll need to master the ability to analyze your own work. This can be a difficult task, somewhat akin to trying to look at your own face (without a mirror). If you are […]
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