Editing Tips to Help you Sell your Script
How to Edit: Editing Tips to Help you Sell your Script
Writing is rewriting. As writers, we hear this expression endlessly, but how many of us loathe and avoid the rewriting process?
If you want to succeed in Hollywood, you will have to learn how to edit and embrace the dreaded rewrite as a necessary part of the development of your script. The only way to sell your script is to get feedback from trusted readers and dive back in to make your script as good as it can be before you submit your screenplay to executives.
Editing Tips: Top 5 Reasons to Take Rewriting Seriously
1. Executives will give you notes.
The odds of selling your script will improve dramatically if you prove you can take notes like a pro. Be humble. Listen. Digest. Then roll up your sleeves and get the job done so producers want to work with you. You’re not only selling your script, you’re selling yourself.
2. Your story will improve after you’ve had some distance and time to digest it.
In the history of screenwriting, no first draft was ever as good as the final draft. Give your story a chance to evolve. Don’t give up on it too soon or selling the script will be impossible.
3. Studios will put a red mark next to your name in their database if you submit a script that’s poorly written.
Don’t blow your chance to make a great first impression. If your script submission isn’t polished, you’ll never sell your screenplay… ever.
4. Don’t make it easy for them to give your script a “pass.”
No executive wants to be stuck in “development hell.” The more polished a story is, the greater your odds of selling a script.
5. Because your story deserves it … and you deserve it.
Don’t blow your chances of achieving your dreams by giving up on yourself and your story. If you don’t believe in it enough to rewrite it to a polish, then why should any producer believe in you? You are your words. Make sure they represent who you are as a writer.
Mastering the Art of Editing and Revising your Screenplayastering
Rewriting your screenplays can be a challenging venture, but if you master the art of revising and editing — and know the differences between the two — it can be a rather simple and straightforward process to get to that fantastic polished final draft.
It’s more than just figuring out your story and characters — revising and editing plays a huge part in getting your screenplay from an early draft to a final draft that is ready to be unleashed upon Hollywood. But what’s the difference between revising and editing?
Defiance College discussed an excellent breakdown of the differences, specifically in regards to rewriting college essays. Here we apply those ideas directly to screenwriting and how you can best get that final draft to where it needs to be.
Revising
Revising is a process that is ongoing as you write your script. It’s not a simple one-stop activity where you go from cover to cover of your screenplay in one sitting and fix certain elements. And it has nothing to do with spelling, grammar, or punctuation.
Depending upon your own writing process, habits, and tendencies, revision is an organic undertaking that can be a day-to-day or a draft-to-draft task — often both.
It’s different from editing or proofreading (see below) because the choices that are being made and the things that you are trying to figure out affect the big picture of your feature film or television series pilot script — the structure, the story, and the characters.
Some screenwriters blaze through that first draft as quickly as possible and are caught in a web as they try to figure out a way to make everything come together into a cohesive and cathartic cinematic story.
Other screenwriters practice the “rewrite as you go” process where they read back previous pages written during their last writing sessions, revise them to ensure that they connect seamlessly with the writing session pages before that, and then write on under the same style, tone, pacing, and atmosphere.
Whether you’re revising draft to draft or writing session to writing session (we recommend the latter), it’s important to know what revisions entail. You don’t want to be caught in the details of editing and proofreading because you will lose your focus on what the revision is really about — the structure, story arcs, and character arcs. You can also include pacing, theme, tone, atmosphere, and catharsis to that equation as well.
To understand revising you can use the ARMS acronym to ensure that you are staying on that revision course throughout your writing process.
Add — Adding sentences and words to your scene description and dialogue to tell your story better.
Remove — Removing sentences and words from your scene description and dialogue to better embrace the “less is more” mantra of screenwriting.
Move — Moving sentences and words from your scene description and dialogue to create better pacing, structure, and flow.
Substitute — Substituting words and sentences for new ones to create better syntax, articulation, and style.
Editing
Once you’ve managed to revise your screenplay through writing sessions and multiple drafts, it’s time to polish that script by eliminating those inescapable and annoying spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes that still linger within your pages.
You accomplish this through proofreading your story with your eyes specifically scanning for those types of errors. During this process, you need to avoid having revision in mind because you will surely miss multiple technical mistakes if your mind keeps wandering to the revising of structure, story, and character.
To stay in the proper frame of mind, remember to use the CUPS acronym to keep you focused.
Capitalize — Capitalizing names, places, titles, months, and other elements. Example: If you’re writing a military script, lieutenant should be Lieutenant (titles).
Usage — Making sure that the usage of nouns and verbs is correct. Example: “Have you packed your luggages?” is incorrect. The correct version would be “Have you packed your luggage?” While this example may seem extreme and silly, you’d be surprised how many mistakes like this are found in submitted screenplays.
Punctuation — Making sure punctuation is correct by checking periods, quotes, commas, semicolons, apostrophes, etc.
Spelling — Spellchecking all words and looking for homophone mistakes.
Homophone Examples: Your and You’re. New and Knew. To and Too. There, Their, and They’re. Its and It’s. Then and Than. Effect and Affect. Cache and Cachet. Break and Brake. Principle and Principal. Breath and Breathe. Rain, reign, and rein. By, buy, and bye.
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