The key to a great script is oner part writing and a lot more parts RE-writing. This is not an exact science folks. And I want to START by saying if you've never read early drafts of Back to the Future, seek them out and see how not-good they are. Even the best scripts may not work at first.
As I write this, I myself am on the 5th draft of a script that just refuses to work. I am sick of working on it, I don’t like it much any more, and I HATE that I can see where I went wrong and didn’t avoid it sooner. Sometimes, concepts sound great but just don’t work. There are literally hundreds of screenplays bought or commissioned every year that never get made because something just didn’t click.
There are literally hundreds of screenplays bought or commissioned every year that never get made because something just didn’t click. So how do you head this problem off at the pass?
For me, the problem is I didn’t trust my gut. A lot of writing is instinctual.
My usual process is to write a vomit draft no one sees. Then, a revision that goes to my mean, overly critical test-readers. Their notes cause 24 hours of self loathing, then answers start coming to me and I revise, and send to manager. She gives notes, revise again, send to agents. This project had me two craft very different drafts on my own, I only had my partner test read, and she made me redraft. Then it went to my manager, and two re-drafts more. (I know you're reading for advice, but I wanted to share where I was.)
SO WHY DID I CHANGE MY PROCESS? (This is advice now.) While I am all for changing up your process with each project, if you skipped or didn't do something you know always works for you and you don't know why, that should be a clue. We make subconscious decisions. Which brings me to—
WRITER'S BLOCK ISN'T REAL. And I was stuck several times on this project. Writer's block is your gut/subconscious telling you what you're trying to write isn't right. I had to FORCE scenes out on this project, like mental constipation. My gut knew something wasn't working. I've done this enough (this is script 32? 33?) to trust my gut, and this time I was ignoring it.
In this case, I know why.
As of this writing, (April 2023) there have been several successive box office wins for horror: mile, Barbarian, and M3GAN specifically. Studios are actually interested in giving horror movies more than $5m, which has been very rare for most of my career. Also, the WGA is currently moving toward a possible strike. Before a strike there is often a content grab. I have spec sale stars in my eyes, and I have second guessed myself in trying to write what I think studios want. While this in and of itself isn't a bad strategy, it has to be tempered with my own vibe.
This is possibly the hardest thing about screenwriting. This is a craft that sits in the nexus of creativity and commerce. If your goal is to sell scripts (as opposed to making them yourself) being aware of that balance is key to getting anywhere. I was ignoring my (admittedly sometimes non-commercial) sensibilities and focusing too much and what I thought others wanted. I don't always find success just listening to myself, but I have to at least START there.
If your script isn't working and you want to figure out why, the first question, as I've ranted above, is generally the best place to start. Did you PUSH harder then normal? Are there things you know just barely work that you don't love?
DO YOU HAVE A SOLID THEME? Sometimes I start with thematics, sometimes I don't. While not every movie needs a strong theme, there's no case where having one doesn't help unify things. Writing to theme is way to keep things on track.
DO YOUR CHARACTERS USE LOGIC? Simple test-- do your characters act and react in scenes in a way that is both believable and true to their conceit, or are they doing things because it's what the story needs to do?
DID YOU GET LAZY BREAKING YOUR STORY? As somebody who is anxious to write and likes to find things on the page, I often break my stories very loosely. Normally it still works out fine for me, but in this case there were places I said "I'll figure this out later," and I didn't.
ARE THERE TOO MANY ASKS/BUYS FOR THE AUDIENCE? This is a huge one that not enough people talk about on the front end-- me included. Those threads on opening scenes or breaking story I wrote, didn't get into this enough. You get ONE transaction with your audience. Meaning?
You ask the audience to buy into something-- generally your core concept or conflict set-up. Pretty much any movie is based on a "this would actually never happen" set-up, especially in genre films. People going in are ready for this. Throw another one at them, at you run the risk of losing them. You get ONE of these buys, MAAAAAAAYBE if you're really good. More than that, people just won't accept it on a cellular level. I'd love to give examples, but putting down movies is something I try to avoid. But we've all been there.
We've been watching a movie and suddenly it feels like we're being pitched something else entirely. OR, and this is what the problem is with what I am trying to wrangle, the two concepts may not be compatible... or you need space to sell them, and they are competing for your page count, which then derails things like the actual story, point of view, etc. When this happens, even adding an acceptable new element-- like a backstory flashback, or a b-storyline, suddenly feels like WAY to much. My script is a tight 90 pages, but each draft feels like it has WAY too much in it.
The irony for me in this situation is that I have booked several rewrite jobs, and these are all the things I am generally brought in to fix. The fact that I have gone and messed these up in a spec is... unnerving. To be honest, both of my buys are pretty flipping clever... I just haven't cracked how to get them to gel properly. I WILL figure it out-- but more than anything the lesson here for all of us, myself included, is that screenwriting is not easy, it's always an experiment, and even a lot of experience doesn't get you out of doing rewrites.