The Right Process for Rewriting a Screenplay

It’s a great question but one that requires a detailed answer if you want a complete guide to how to do re-writes. So fasten your seat belts.

I am working with Major Studios and Independent Companies , developing screenplays, helping writers write and re-write drafts from scratch to screen and have been doing it for almost 20 years.

You are mentioning some very valid and common problems. Allow me to address them one by one and at the end of my response you will find some practical advice.

what do you a new draft is?

Here is a bit of unpleasant news. Re-writes are not just editing or shortening or shuffling scenes around and adding commas. As the word implies, a re-write is actually re-writing the story. In all my experience re-writes can and are often, very drastic changes to a story. It’s different for each story but just to give you an idea about what is common, I can tell you that sometimes we have to change the protagonist to a different person. Sometimes, we make a subplot into the main plot and the result is that 60 percent of everything has to be changed. Sometimes characters are added, others deleted. Right now I am working on a screenplay about one person and we are changing it into an ensemble piece with 4 protagonists. Sometimes the whole focus of the story is wrong.- The writer thought that the story was about the detective solving a crime, when it was really his relationship with his daughter that is the most important and the crime not. And so everything save for the characters have to be changed. Sometimes it is about adding suspense and to do that´, many things have to be changed; the characters main objective,more things put at stake, time constraints, adding complications, adding more twists and so on. And then there’s off course structure: often we have to either change the turning points or move them around.

What is the usual number of drafts?

When you are a professional and work under contract, the ‘Standard’ Contract will call for anywhere from 4 to 6 drafts. I’m putting standard, in quotes because when it comes to re-writes, there are no standards. It all depends on the budget and the writer and every contract is different. However, I can tell you that the actual process always (and I repeat) always calls for many more re-writes than what the contract stipulates.

However, Tv-shows are very different. As you know Tv-shows are written by teams of writers, never a solitary writer. So, as far as the individual episodes go, much of the re-writing is done around the Writer’s table, with all the writers pitching in. And when they are done, the producer and sometimes a script analyst will supply the show runner and episode writers with extensive notes. ( I worked on “The Bridge” and “The Killing” and that’s what we did.)

But the Pilot script, is off course different because it’s written on spec and by yourself, so there is not telling what the the usual number of drafts are although I will attempt to provide you with an answer, in a short while.

How should I approach rewriting my scripts?

Re-writes are, as you’ve noticed, very hard to do by yourself. It’s hard to see your own writing from an outside perspective while at the same time, writing it from a personal perspective. - both of which you need to do, to write it well.

As you know, in a professional setting such as a studio, these things are handled by sending the writer script notes on how to re-write. These notes are often made by the producer and sometimes in collaboration with a script analyst such as myself and others.

But when you are on you own, you have to rely on yourself and friends. And you can do that as long as you follow a few guidelines.

First of all you need to Realize that your friends are your friends for a reason. They wan’t to help you which is a great thing, one of the best things in life but when it comes to getting constructive criticism their wanting to help you and support you, often is counter productive.

It’s very hard for a friend to say the truth because they want to support you emotionally and stay friends with you. So, it’s much easier to avoid any confrontation and just give you what they think you need; praise and support, even if you need them to be critical.

You should also be aware that as a writer, we need that support, praise and recognition and so we can´t help ourselves but to communicate that subconsciously when we ask our friends for critique. When you are asking a friend what he thinks of your screenplay, or even worse, if he likes it, you will only get one answer: It’s great!! Because that the answer you were asking for.

You may not realize it but it but actually the very subtext of the question. But there are ways to avoid that, - ways , in which you can actually have your friends critique your screenplay in constructive ways. It’s all about how you ask the questions, what questions you ask and which questions you should never ask. So here goes:

1. Never ask anyone what they think about your screenplay. There are two reasons for this. I have already mentioned the first one; it’s no more than an invitation to praise it, which is not going to help you improve it. Secondly it’s a question that addresses taste and taste is one of the most useless obstacles to a writer. Even if someone is honest with you, you will find that someone loves it, others hate it and so at the end of the day, you are left as confused as you were in the beginning. Asking questions that refers to either taste or quality is something you will never get an answer to.
2. Ask concrete questions that addresses effect, not about quality but about how specific things work. For instance; Don’t show your friends the whole screenplay. Focus on specific scenes and know that you are aiming to know whether the intention of the scene, not the quality, works. You can show a friend a specific scene, no more than that, and ask her concrete questions like; When the protagonist shows her friend that mail that she got, what did that make you think about her? - Let’s say that my friends reply was: I thought that it showed that she is desperate for attention. If that was your intention as a writer, the scene worked. But if your attention was to show that your protagonist was guilty of a crime, then you know that you need to re-write it, as your intention was not obvious to the reader. Always ask questions that will help you improve the intended effect of a scene. If you ask your reader; what did this specific moment make you feel and your reader answers; it make me feel great - and if the intention of the scene was to scare them, then you know, you have work to do. It’s all about intentions and effect.
3. ASK QUESTIONS THAT INSPIRE CRITIQUE. Asking directly for specific criticism, even if it’s not needed is also a key factor. Let’s say that I am quite happy with a scene. I think it works and if you ask me in private, I would probably even say that it’s brilliant. But being a seasoned writer and a script doc, I know all to well how we fool ourselves. So, just as safety precaution, I will as my friends very critical questions about the scene, even when I think it’s not necessary. But to inspire critique, I will lead the way in the way that I am asking the questions. I might say things like; This scene doesn’t really work for me,because it’s not nearly as scary as I wanted it to be. What do you think it needs? If your friend has suggestions, then you might have some work to do. But if your friends says things like; I don´t really think that it needs anything. Then, you are on the right track. You can do this with specific scenes as well as the entire story. Try to be the devils advocate here and come up things that people might say and then use that as a guideline. Even if you think that your story is a great comedy as written, you can always ask questions like, what do you think would make this more funny? and again, if the answer is noting, then you've done your job well. But if more people than one come up with suggestions, you might take note, even if you are not going to use their suggestions. Have in mind that I am not asking you to use your friends suggestions. Sometimes friends can make useful suggestions but that shouldn’t be why you are asking for their help. Your friends can help you with getting an idea about whether something need to be re-written or not but you have to come up with how to re-write it. Your friends are your readers and as such can come up with valuable insights into how your story works and where to improve it but rarely, will they give you advise on how to improve it.

Another way to help you is to have a table read. We do that quite often at the later stage of development. We get a bunch of actors in, pay them a fee and ask them to read the scripts without any preparations. Their immediate reactions will teach you a lot, and especially with comedy. Because if your jokes are truly funny, the other actors around the table will respond spontaneously. If they don’t you have a problem and need to make a note about it even if you and all your friends told you it was hilarious. A table read will not only teach you how it sounds, what jokes work or not, but it will also teach you something more valuable;

Use a table read to get feedback from the actors. After you’ve done the read, set some time aside to have an honest discussion with the actors about the parts that they’ve just read. How did they perceive their characters. What can you improve? ask for their help, here. What was the major problems with the character ? (notice how I ask leading questions, even if I don´t think it is warranted)

Once you have gathered enough notes about changes from different sources, then you are almost ready for a re-write. I say ‘Almost’ because you are still missing and important source- your self.

AS I said, it’s hard to read your own screenplay. But if you are writing on spec and not under time constraints, there are easy things you can do to help yourself.

Put your screenplay away for a month an read it again. But make sure you are not thinking about it, during that month. Use the time to draft up another story. That will keep your mind preoccupied with something else. Then, when you are ready, read it again but this time have a notebook ready by your side and stop whenever something doesn't feel right. Make a note and move on.

CONDENSE ALL YOUR NOTES INTO 4 NOTES ONLY

When you are done with this, you are almost ready for a re-write but not completely. You need to gather your notes and make some general conclusions about them. Divide them into 4 categories; STORY, STRUCTURE, CHARACTER, DIALOGUE. What is the general conclusion about each one of those elements in all your notes? That’s what you need to ask yourself. For each of those categories you need to condense the comments into one or two major problems. For instance, for plot that could be: Not enough suspense.Story lacks surprises Or for characters it could be: we fail to connect with the main character and he needs to be more focused.

CONCLUSIONS AND DIRECTION FORWARD

Now that you have done that, its time to come up with some conclusions about the problems. What could you do about it. Here it is important that you distance yourself from the fact that you wrote the story. Go into “analysis” mode and approach the problem as you would with a any story that you’ve read or seen. The tricky part here is not to go into writers mode. “Writers mode” happens when you can only think of one solution - the solution you feel in your gut. Well that gut, have led you to the problems you are having now, so that is not going to help you. You can’t solve the problem with the problem. You need to distance yourself and one way to force you to do that is to come up with many solutions rather than the one that first comes to mind. Even if that, first solution is great, it most likely just instinct talking or worse; a subconscious attempt to get it over with quickly. So for that reason, force yourself to come up with at least 5 solutions to each problem. Make a list of them to make sure you are doing the work and then when you are done, spend time evaluating which solution is the best.

That will give you direction forward. The whole idea here is to plan a course of action moving forward. Write down the overall 4 solutions in a simple, one sentence way, and use those as a guideline to charter your objective with the next draft. For instance one such note about character could be; We need to feel more empathetic towards him. -no more than that.

THE 4 MINI REWRITES

Once you have done that you are ready for some mini re-writes. Take one note and one note only, Story, structure, character or dialogue and start rewriting the whole thing with that one objective only.

When you are done, take another note, go through the whole screenplay from start to finish and do the same with the new note and so on.

Once you are done with that, you need to see the whole screenplay in context. Many things should have changed by now and you have deliberately done so without looking into the consequences of how those changes affected one another and the screenplay as a whole.

Put the whole thing aside again and do everything over again but this time with the sole objective of looking at coherency, only.

Anyway, I hope this answers your question. If you have more, don’t hesitate but feel free to ask again in the comment section.

• Invention - Figure out what you want to write. Eg Its a murder mystery, who dies? Who did it? Who is the red herring? Who solves it?

• Organisation - Decide how you want the information to come through. Eg How do you drip feed the information that leads to the twist, and then the discovery of the real murderer.

• Drafting - Write a draft with all the above information.

• Revise - I find speaking aloud useful here. Will the audience understand what I'm trying to get across? Are my senctences as sharp as I can get them? This is a long process, how many drafts depend on how crisp you want to get it.

• Edit - Is my grammer and punctuation and spelling correct. (This is the bit I useually get a bit of help with. No surprise there says you.)

1. Outline the general story, making sure to hit all the major plot points(assuming you already have the story in mind).
2. Outline a scene in more detail.
3. Write the scene.
4. Repeat 2-3 until you have it complete.
5. Put it away and let it sit for sometime.
6. Reread and rewrite using steps 2-4 for the process.