Good news is you can fix things right now!
Pictures
How much dialogue do you have on your first page? Visual action is a more efficient way to introduce the reader to your world.
When a reader starts a script, they know nothing and they want to learn. Start your script with descriptions of what the audience will see on the screen. Describe people doing things, not saying things, as this is an effective way of providing them context, backstory, character, and environment——right from the start.
Are there great scripts that open with dialogue? Yes. But learn how to start with motion pictures before you break the rules.
No Pictures
If you’re describing pictures on a wall of a character’s family, their degrees from colleges to show how smart they are, or a television set with a news reporter speaking into a microphone, consider using the actions and words of your characters to deliver backstory and exposition instead.
Pointing a camera at another static picture or broadcast is not cinematic. Do we see this all the time in movies and television shows? Yes. Is it lazy? Absolutely.
If you have descriptions of photos or TV news on page one, you’re unfortunately sending a weak signal to the reader. Is there a different and stronger way to tell your story?
Tattoos
Writers often describe a very specific visual clue on a character’s body, like a tattoo or scar, which we will need to remember later to understand a major plot turn or conflict resolution. Often times this comes almost immediately in a script. This will require an extreme close up shot of someone’s neck or leg. If the audience or reader happens to miss this particular detail, they won’t understand the story.
Do not put all your chips on one insert shot that we have to remember for the entire script. It’s fragile writing. Compel your audience with characters and their choices, not “blink and you miss it” plot construction.
Morning
If you start your script with a character waking up (usually with alarms), this tells us you have no idea how to start your story.
Always begin your script with nobody waking up. Thank you.
Shoes
Writers often introduce a character by describing the shoes or feet of a character walking into the story. How many times do you remember seeing a character’s feet before their face in a movie? How often does this happen in real life? Really almost never.
Check your script for feet and shoe introductions.
Words
Less words always. Start with few words on page one. Give your script air. Leave lots of white space on page one and throughout. When a reader sees blocks of writing on page one, they sense an early draft. Pro scripts always use blank space to engage the mind and heart of the reader.
See how many words you can remove while telling the same story. Take this seriously.
Characters
How many characters appear on page one? If your reader has just started your script, let them digest a very small number of characters. Maybe just one. Scripts that introduce a dozen people on page one overwhelm and confuse.
We are starting an emotional relationship with the people in your story. Give us the space and time to establish a connection in a healthy, organic way. Pace your introductions of the characters in your script and avoid the rush of rolling them out instantly.
Story
Writers are often told to hook an audience in the first five pages, etc. This pushes writers to rush their story into the first few moments of their script. Readers sense an effort to engage and often feel bewildered as to what’s going on. Clarity suffers. Emotion gets trampled by plot.
Exhibit patience on page one. Do not cram a thing. Tell the truth in a measured way and let the reader become interested. If you take your time and respect their intelligence, they will.
***
Fixing the first page is very important—–doing it on every page of your script is another thing. But that’s the horizon for every writer: to have every page compel the reader forward. Compelling scripts have great powers, and can make everything happen. Be patient, diligent, and meticulous in your work and one day your work will completely separate itself from every other script in the pile.
Oh yeah, and don’t describe the sun or sky at the start of your script. 🙂
Screenplay Competition
Submit your feature, pilot or short script to receive written analysis.Â
Script Consultations
Receive feedback on your script from BlueCat’s Founder and Judge, Gordy Hoffman.Â
excelent advice
I want to write an entire script where no one wakes up.
I want to write a script were everyone wakes up at the same time.
I’ve already read it.
EVERY character in”Alien” wakes up at the beginning. Even “Ash”, who is a robot.
Sounds like another zombie movie. Technically they don’t wake up but you can still have them as early rises 🙂
Ha. I have a ghost who sleeps but her eyes never close. Is that okay?
Nice points.
Sound advice.
So many conflicting ideas about screenwriting out there that it blows your mind.🤯 I have a feeling that it was easier to get a script made in the nineties.
You’re right, “John-on-November 8.” I am told things in Coverage that the next Coverage completely contradicts. I once wrote about a psychiatrist and was told that I had just written about a priest, not a doctor. I was chief of the Medical Staff for twenty-one years in a psychiatric facility. Go figure. Apparently the reader didn’t know anything about either. However, there are some exquisitely subtle things about writing that this piece catches. Kudos to the writer. Less really is more, and this article catches that oh so nicely. Thanks to the writer. As for easier, back whenever, maybe just different. Some things were easier, back then, but some things were much harder, too. The trick, if there is a trick, is to develop one’s own inner eye and then not be afraid to write what one sees.
Alfred Dunham: I agree with everything you said. Sometimes readers don’t have the skills to fully engage with topics they know little about. They filter the story through their own experience instead of staying open to learning. And yes: it was a great article. Thank you.
The hardest part of writing any script in my humble opinion is finding someone to represent you. That and the beginning, middle and end! everything else is easy.
“1 percent inspiration, 99 percent representation.”
Marry into the business, be born into it, or get represented by one of the four packaging agencies by the time you’re thirty-five.
Otherwise…Fuggedaboutit!
I write my story. Then in the subsequent drafts find interesting ways of showing the event. I’ll write the wake up shot knowing I’ll remove it later.
I had two drug dealers watching their boss drive up in a huge SUV. Not bad, but done a thousand times in “The Wire”. So I need an interesting way to get into that conversation.
I’ll add it what I think of it.
I have to say many movies have characters where the shot starts with them getting out a damn car so many films that do this exact thing and it’s boring as hell but Hollywood still does it today. Women often say in real life that they always notice a man’s shoes before they even consider about going any further to even inviting him over or they themselves going over for a conversation. I just recently saw this in the movie “Hustlers”. Even though the scene only lasted but for a blink of a second.
There are still films made by Hollywood with people waking up and the shot displays photos of people on the walls etc.
I mean just about everything listed above I still see in scripts and these are from new released films. So how is it such a bad thing for Hollywood to repetitively do but not for us novice writers. This is why it’s so damn upsetting as a novice to write scripts.
“Always begin your script with nobody waking up.” LOL Hilarious.