Editing Screenplay

Editing Screenplay

I see a lot of people claiming that typos, formatting mistakes, etc shouldn't be held against a script and that what matters is the story. And that's true. But...

While I agree that a great script is not made any less great by an abundance of typos, spelling mistakes or formatting issues, the fact of the matter is that these things usually aren't there in good scripts in the first place. This is because writing a good script takes dozens of drafts, polishes, rewrites and hundreds of reads, re-reads and re-re-reads as you go along until it finally gets to the point where it's market ready. During that process, most typos and formatting issues get naturally spotted and fixed, even if you're not actively looking for them. Of course a couple might slip through, but the vast majority are caught during those many (many, many, many) re-reads that are natural to the process of writing a draft that's ready for sharing.

When I see a script averaging 2 typos per page, it's eye-rollingly clear that the writer wrote the script in a week or two, proofread it twice and thought they were done. Unless you're a genius, you can't write a decent script like that. It takes time. It takes effort. The current WGA minimum for a feature-length screenplay is almost 100 grand. Do you really think it takes two weeks to do something good enough that companies will pay you 100 grand for it?

So it's not that typos make your script worse so much as they are an indication that your script probably wouldn't be much good even without typos, because one of the unintended byproducts of putting in the work necessary to make your story good is that you catch and fix non-story issues in your document.

At the beginning of any writing project is the agonizing period in which nebulous ideas dance before the mind’s eye like memories of a dream, and vaporous vague shapes take on human form and begin to answer to their names. Trying to will a world into existence. I circle around it, nibbling at the edges, writing notes about the social infrastructure and expounding to no one in particular about the themes of the thing. Then slowly a change happens. Without warning, it becomes easier to write a scene than to write notes about the scene. I start sticking words in the mouths of characters who are still mannequins, forcing them to move and to walk. Slowly their movements become more human. The curve inflects upward, the pace increases. The characters begin to say things in their own words… Any scene that I couldn’t crack right away, I skimmed over and used the novelistic treatment form to sort of mumble through. What you have is at once a kind of pathetic document; it is as long as a script, but messy and undisciplined, full of cheats and glossed-over sections. But it is also an interesting snapshot of formatting a moment in the creative process… The value of [the scriptment] lies solely in it being presented unchanged, unedited, unpolished. It is the first hurling of paint against the wall…”