This is a Rewrite!

Today I'm going to over screenwriting again, since it is the most important part of the entire production. After you've already written the script, you take a break, maybe even feel some sort of accomplishment for following something all the way through.

I didn't really. I just felt like some intense pressure that had been looming over me was going to give me a week off. Now you come back to it and start rewriting. So how do you know when you're done rewriting, you don't. Some will tell you that you'll have a feeling when you're done. Others will tell you, you're never done. I felt it was done but could always be polished, so I rewrote a little bit everyday while getting the rest of the production ready.

After finishing your screenplay, you might feel the need to send it to some of your closest friends or a script doctor. Avoid it. That's just the weak part of your mind either wanting fained compliments to make you feel good or an "expert" opinion to tell you how you should feel about it.

You just finished your first of many, many drafts. Why not wait till the third or fourth draft before you do this. If you send your friends a crappy first draft, how excited do you think they'll be to read your sixth draft?

Why spend $200-300 on a script doctor on something you already know needs work. Save them till the end.

Some will tell you to rewrite your entire script you need to do a complete rewrite. Well, I tried that. Guess what, it was a complete rewrite. It was an almost entirely new script. When you rewrite the script from the beginning, how much do you want to follow the last gameplan. Kind of boring, at least for me.

It was like reliving past experiences, so the only way to make it any fun is to make different choices to see what happens. So my new script was completely different. Now, there were some good things to come out of it.

I took a few of the ideas and used them in my old draft, but most of it was just successful in a writing excercise.

So I went back to the original, and never sent that script to anyone. Why? Anyone? No? Okay, I already told you but I'll tell you again...Don't send the first draft to anyone!

"But Steve wasn't that technically the second draft or some shit"?

Well said, but it was more like a first draft in the sense that it was completely different and would need polishing in a completely new way.

Now I didn't follow my advice, because I didn't have the advice till I made the mistake...which is how I got the advice.

I not only sent my first draft to a script doctor, but all 250 pages of it. Wow, I don't think you need an idiot like me to tell you to never do that. But just to let you know, I like to make my own mistakes rather than follow rules from a screenwriting book at Barnes & Noble.

Follow Syd Field or Robert McKee if you want, I just like to make mistakes first then read their books after I'd made a few screenplays so I can look more objectively than just follow blindly.

Anyway, not only did the scriptdoctor complain about how long it was, I had to pay an extra $50. The script doctor bascially told me things I already knew, too long, too many characters, etc.

He told me it was really funny, but needed to get some serious cuts. Which may be the hardest part of the screenwriting process, cutting your favorite scenes. You love them, they may be the funniest part of the movie. But if they're not necessary, you're gonna have to cut them.

My friends told me it was funny and didn't think it was too long. But they don't know how long a movie's supposed to be. When they read the new 90 page version they thought it was too short.

Hopefully you'll get lucky and have that one friend who's completely honest. He let me know my first draft was all over the place.

Pretty much all the advice I got were things I'd already come to terms with. It's just nice to have the validation. That's mostly what you'll pay a scriptdoctor for, to validate the little things you already believe in the back of your head.

I only paid for one scriptdoctor, one time. The best way to go about it two pay for two scriptdoctors, two times. But I actually wanted to make a movie this year, so I skimped on that.

I knew what I wanted and that's all that mattered. I did find outside sources for criticism though.

Triggerstreet.com enables you to have horrible screenwriters critique you as you critique other horrible screenwriters. I'm sure there's some decent one's there, I just haven't seen any. And if I seem pessimistic I'm not. If you had read a screenplay about a prostitute that convinces a 70 foot cyclops to kill everyone last man on earth and it wasn't even the worst of the screenplays you'd read, than you might feel the same way as me.

I'm not sure what else I can tell you. Write, the rewrite as many times as possible before you shoot it. Get outside opinions, keep it around 90 pages, and don't be predictable.

I'll never understand why people want to make a movie that's already been made a hundred times. Where does that passion come from?

Know you're talents and your...non talents. I'm awesome at dialogue, but I'm not good at...something? Maybe I'm good at everything. That's the kind of self confidence that get's a movie made.

By the way, if you suck at dialogue, than there may be no hope for you. Unless you're writing Rumble in the Bronx II chances are you will whither into obscurity. So if it's possible, learn to write realistic dialogue.

Also, read your script aloud to someone, you'll be able to tell when they're bored or if they think something's funny.

And oh yeah, WRITE! Don't think about writing, that's thinking. Just write! Bad writing doesn't hurt anyone unless it's the final draft or somebody read it. But you're still better than all the thinkers out there, or the talkers. You wrote so you're a writer.

The only time you should stay away from writing is when you've finished a new draft, stay away from it for a few weeks. That way it's fresh when you come back to it. If you still laugh at a line, get excited during an action scene, or wince during a horror moment. It's good, and best of all you wrote it.

I didn't come up with all this, some of it is sound advice I regurgitated from the greats. But I used all of it so I know it works.

That's it for today, next time I'll get to the actual making of the movie.