5 Things to Check Before Script Submission (aka. 5 Dumb Mistakes People Keep Making)

Sending off your script to an agent / producer / festival / competition / overly-complimentary friend is tinged with the same nervous blend of excitement and pride usually reserved for taking your kids to school for the first time. Of course, much like with the fate of your children, you would ultimately rather they didn't return to you covered in red pen and holding a note telling you why they are rubbish. This begs the question - why not take every step to ensure that your script is at least readable when you've already spent all this time and money on getting it out there? You'd probably be surprised to know the percentage of screenplays I've come across that have made these absolutely basic errors in both scriptwriting and judgement. Please, for everyone's sake, just check these 5 things before you inflict your story upon the world.

1) You Have A Title Page

"Hey, mate! I saw this amazing film in the cinema the other day! It was about this dude who was, like, trapped on Mars or whatever, and he was, like, the only one there, and he ends up, like, trying to live there while he waits to be rescued!"
"That sounds cool. What was it called?"
"Don't know."
"Oh. Ok. Wait, is that the one based on that book?"
"Didn't say."
"Hmm, well, who wrote the screenplay?"
"There was a screenplay?!"

See that? Absolute anarchy in conversation form. Obviously, we all know the film they were referring to was Macbeth, but you see my point? No Title Page = No Clue. And don't you try and defend this oversight by saying the PDF includes the title, because that entire argument falls apart if and when the script gets printed out and put in front of someone important (let alone the fact the PDF is usually adorned with draft numbers, dates and other indecipherable hieroglyphics). 99 times out of 100, your name slapped on the front of a screenplay will mean absolutely nothing to me - but that 1 time when I genuinely enjoy your script and want to pass your name on to high powers, you'd better pray that your moniker and contact details are all there for me to exploit.

2) You Have Actually Read It Out Loud

Look, I know that it's easy to feel self-conscious when you find yourself having to awkwardly read out the lines of "Princess Arabeth of Drukain" in front of the bathroom mirror, whilst desperately praying your roommates don't walk in and recommend you a good therapist for dealing with crippling loneliness. Reading your work out loud is not about performance, though - it's simply to determine whether each line of dialogue sounds natural, true to the character and, y'know, actually like it makes a shred of sense. Like with the title page, it seems like such a basic check that people seem to overlook because "hey, it's the script reader's problem now". This isn't just limited to the dialogue either, as some writers apparently feel the bizarre compulsion to write scene description like they're recapping the abbreviated highlights of the England game on BBC Sport.

If, somehow, you read your entire first draft out loud for the first time and you find absolutely nothing wrong with it, don't celebrate, because you haven't nailed it. You need to call in another pair of honest ears to listen to what you're saying and give you moment-to-moment feedback. Script readers are naturally constricted by having to give you general notes in the form of a report, and usually only have time to touch on a few specific examples to illustrate their points. Get someone else involved to give yourself an objective perspective before submission. Better yet, have them read some of the parts, or even all of it, as the points where they'll stumble will be a good indication of where you've dropped the ball and need to take another look.

3) You Have No Delusions of Grandeur

Newsflash: Writing a script doesn't entitle you to anything. You don't deserve praise or production. Readers have no inclination to try and like it. Your script is just another in a long line of scripts that are rolling those 2015-sided dice, desperately hoping to be given a chance. Now, let's take our feet off the "Angry Gas Pedal", and slowly apply pressure to the "Brakes of Optimistic Realism". Just because you don't deserve something, doesn't mean you can't earn it by writing a great story. And trust me - readers really want to like your script because, even though it might give us less to write in our reports, we naturally want to enjoy the experience as if it were an already finished movie. And rolling the dice, well... The odds are really down to you more than anyone else.

So how does this affect your script submission? Bottom line, you need to ensure the merit of this script speaks for itself. Don't try and grease the wheels with your covering letter or submission form. Don't assume production is an inevitability when you shoehorn in references to licensed music and where CGI will be needed. I've often come across sequels to the writer's previously unproduced work, which, whilst admirable in their level of commitment, usually leaves me at a complete loss as to how I can approach overall story feedback. I've also read scripts that, despite thankfully including a title page, felt the need to name drop the writer's previous competition successes. Telling me this script won a competition in the past at best merits a brief "ooo" of curiosity, before my expectations are raised to a point where you simply won't reach - don't toot your own horn, before I'm given the chance to toot it for you (which, I assure you, is not a sexual prize for winning my approval).

4) You Have A Basic Understanding of Logic

Getting increasingly broad here, as we move away from script specific errors (more on those in future weeks) into dissecting the persistent folly of the modern writer. I don't want to go too deep into the inherent nature of cause and effect, or how the universe dictates a natural order of events, but COME ON, PEOPLE. If a woman eats an apple, then the apple is not in ensuing the scenes (at least not visually). The amount of lapses in basic logic found in most speculative scripts actually becomes a bizarre mixture of exasperating and hilarious after a certain point. So much of the time, it's simply the case that there's no connecting action - e.g. a guy gets punched and falls to the floor, before jumping onto his attacker, which omits the crucial detail of him getting up off the floor. It sounds so minor but, in the long run, it really adds up to leave a sour taste.

If you discover yourself to be one of these logically-challenged individuals, or other people keep telling you that you are, follow this basic, step-by-step guide to ensure that every event in your screenplay is 100% valid to transpire. Step 1) Event takes place. Step 2) Immediate subsequent event takes place. Step 3) Repeat Step 2 as many times as required to progress the scene to its natural conclusion. Step 4) Complete scene. Step 5) Ensure none of the aforementioned events contradict or undermine any of its preceding events. Step 6) Congratulations, you've just written a logical scene. Welcome to this Universe. Look, at the end of the day, most, if not all, movies and TV shows have plot holes, but that absolutely doesn't give you the right to ignore yours. In fact, you need to try and be at least 10 steps ahead of your audience. Draw graphs, make timelines, hire a fact-checker - just please, for the love of all that is logical, do something.

5) That It's Actually A Script

Yep. This is the big one. I'm not really sure how much clearer public calls for Film or TV scripts need to be to actually make people get the picture. These are both visual mediums. That you means you need to be giving a viewer something to watch, even during long passages of conversation. Actions, reactions, background events, montages, metaphorical images, scenery, a Stan Lee cameo - there's always so much you can be doing to complement or contrast with your unfolding story. That's the big difference between someone who knows what a script is ("Oh, it's just where you tell all the characters what to say") and someone who actually understands how a script works ("Oh, it only dictates the content of the entire movie"). Even if you're submitting an early draft (for some reason beyond just disposable income from your presumably more successful job), the script needs to feel like the finished product.

"James!", I hear you exclaim into your computer / mobile screen, "what could you have possibly received to read that wasn't actually a script?". Well, my hypothetical friend, where do I begin? Just because it looks like a script, doesn't mean it is one. I've had writers basically send me "novels" in disguise, where the scene description implicitly details the backstories and inner thoughts of the characters, as if they would somehow be apparent to an audience watching (as well as almost every line of dialogue being preceded by needless parenthesis, like "(exclaiming)"?!). I've read a few movies that have pretended to be plays, focusing their energies on extended passages of rambling dialogue and only referring to "props" and "staging" in direction. I've even had scripts that are so caught up in dictating meaningless camera directions that it wasn't even clear what the camera was ever actually focusing on (were they meta-commentaries that I just didn't understand?!). I am literally on my knees at this point, begging you budding writers, please, PLEASE, check that your script is actually a script, because otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time.

James Cottle, a Scriptwriting Mega-Scholar™, is now a real world Freelance Writer, in between intense bouts of Script Reading. Follow him on Twitter @Jxmxsc, "like" the Anti-Scriptwriting page on Facebook, and share this blog if you want his opinions on your work to be completely unbiased.