Screenwriting Tips... You Hack

Yes, I know people in real life don’t use punctuation when they talk. You still have to put it in the dialogue.

Don’t write a scene where somebody cracks a safe in 5 minutes with a stethoscope. Instead, spend 5 minutes Googling and find out that this process actually takes hours.

Don’t refer to someone as a ‘dark shadow’ or a ‘mysterious figure’ if we already know exactly who it is. This is just more directing-the-script crap.

If you must pretend you’re a novelist and open your script with a quote, make sure it’s not a really trite one.

‘Romantic Subplot’ is just a structural element. It doesn’t necessarily mean ‘romance’. If it makes NO sense for these two characters to hook up in Act 3, don’t force them.

If your script ends with your protagonist winking into the camera, I will hunt you down and I will end you.

Stop telling me what characters’ faces look like, e.g. ‘his face has a look of horror’, ‘her face shows sorrow’. This is bullshit. Who taught you to do this?

This sex scene is so bad that it’s just embarassing for all involved. Thanks, but I didn’t need that glimpse into your psyche.

This scene you have, with these characters wandering in an out of a building, apartment and car? This scene that goes for six pages? It should be MORE THAN ONE SCENE.

You know how to use the Find function? Great! Then you know how to go through your script and remove every single use of the word ‘is’ in your action lines.

How does your 20-something character with a shitty job afford to live alone in an enormous apartment?

Could it be more obvious that this character is Secretly Gay? How stupid are all his friends that they don’t realize, and exactly how dumb do you think your audience is?

Your Meet Cute is too long, not funny and not cute. Unless ‘cute’ means ‘I hope both of these characters die in a house fire’.

This overwrought failure of an action paragraph is twelve lines long, and presumably contains a lot of important action. I say ‘presumably’ because I stopped reading after five lines.

‘Ethnic Guy Who Swears Five Times In Every Sentence’ isn’t a character, it’s a bad SNL sketch. (And Apatow already did it better than you.)

Stop jumping back and forth in time like a busted DeLorean, you fourth-rate Tarantino rip-off.

Oh dear god… You gave everyone in your script a nickname, then used their real names for the character titles and their nicknames in the dialogue. Bad newbie writer. Bad!

Okay, so there’s V.O. over the top of the scene… while the V.O.-ing character is talking. It’s bad enough that I have to read about this shitty character, now I’ve got him yammering away in my head too.

You don’t think it’s a teensy bit racist to describe a character as Chinese, and then name him ‘ASIAN’? No? Just checking.

Scene numbers in a draft is just dumb. Haven’t you ever seen a real screenplay before?