As Coco Chanel said (requoted by Sigourney Weaver’s character in Working Girl): “Dress shabbily, they notice the dress; Dress impeccably, they notice the woman.” Same applies to your script.
Giving and receiving notes is one of the easiest and fastest ways to improve your craft. And script swaps are free.
Storytellers worldwide know that conflict is the central ingredient in a good tale. Every screenplay needs it.
The first job of a screenwriter’s logline is to provide potential readers enough information about the story to entice them to read the script.
Be so compelling in how you reveal your inciting incident that there isn’t a reader in the world who is too jaded to appreciate your unique hook.
To end with a bang means you must culminate your story in a way that leaves that single reader so utterly satisfied that s/he sits back, sighs, and immediately forwards the script with a STRONGLY RECOMMEND tag.
If you’re a brand-new screenwriter, you might not yet know how a screenplay breaks down into parts.
It’s not surprising that screenwriters often confuse these terms. There doesn’t appear to be a definitive common understanding of these words in the screenwriting world.
When a script looks right, with the right amount of whitespace, professional readers get excited because there’s a small chance it could turn out to be a good read; a hidden gem.
The golden ticket to understanding how to show, not tell, is to think of every action line as a camera shot. If the camera can’t see it, delete it.
