This year, Raindance launched its inaugural Screenplay Competition to give more opportunities for independent screenwriters and shine a light on yet undiscovered storytelling talent. As a script reader for the competition, in the past two months, I’ve read over 100 screenplays, shorts, and features, across a number of genres such as drama, action, fantasy, horror, faith-based, historical pieces, and so on…
Reading so many scripts from up-and-coming writers gives you an outstanding cross-section of what stories are yearning to be told. It has also shown me what elements of a screenplay tend to be overlooked. Before you submit to a screenplay competition, make sure that you look at the following components of your script.
Characters
All stories are rooted in character. You need to put your main character in an inescapable, impossibly challenging situation. A reader will need to know very quickly in your script who the character is, what they want, and why they want it now. If nothing else, this is what the first ten pages need to establish.
It is well-known that the industry will make an opinion on a screenplay from the first ten pages. This is not an arbitrary, made-up rule. It is simply based on the fact that the writer needs to convey to the reader, and later on the audience, why they should care about this story.
A great number of screenplays take their time at the beginning, and it reads like the writer is still finding their story. Most script readers are also writers, and will recognise this in a screenplay. It is perfectly fine in an early draft to find your bearings at the beginning of the screenplay. Once you have done one draft or more, you need to trim that down and grab the character by the throat, along with the reader.
Descriptions
Writing screenplays is an odd endeavor. You are writing a story that needs to feel like a good read, but it also needs to leave room for the reader to imagine it, give a feel of the movie that this could be, while also creating a working blueprint for all the departments of movie production to do their work.
Too many screenplays wax poetic in their descriptions (‘In the golden hue of the sunset light…’). Yes, you are writing a story, but you are not writing a novel. Descriptions shouldn’t go on for more than three or four lines at a time. Don’t forget you are not directing the movie. Even if you are a writer-director, the screenplay needs to be completed solely with your writer’s hat on.
As such, descriptions need to be minimal, precise, effective, but not so on the nose that you’re not giving your future collaborators room to be creative. For instance, a romantic interest walking into a room may well be described by a movie viewer as ‘tall, dark-haired, sharp cheekbones in a tight-fitting grey suit’. But in this description, you have done the job of the casting director and the costume designer already. It is much more thrilling for your collaborators, and for the script reader, to write ‘Tim (42), strides into the room with an air of confidence that makes you want to make out with him’. You’ve established the important thing (we need to be attracted) but you’ve given space to the reader to imagine what that looks like for them. Don’t give more information than is relevant to the story.
Pacing
Corollary to the previous point, where descriptions need to be sharply written, effective action lines will give a sense of the pacing of the movie. One of the boxes a screenplay needs to tick is give a feel for the movie once it is made. So you need to give some thought to the pacing of the film and of each sequence and scene.
Economy is the name of the game in a screenplay. You may need to establish a lot at the beginning, but if you’re doing an information dump, you’ve lost the reader already. Film is audio-visual, so you need to write both the audio (sound and dialogue) and the visual (action).
If you’re not sure how to assess whether you’ve done this, look at the shape of the page. If all you can see is dialogue, you’ve got a problem. If all you can see is a Russian novel, you’ve got a problem. On the other hand, if your page looks like it has a good balance between the two, the reader will thank you for it.
Dialogue
Clunky dialogue is not a dealbreaker if you are George Lucas, it clearly has not held him back. As a writer at the beginning of your career, you may not be so lucky. Actors can work with moderately good dialogue in front of the camera, but a reader who is on their fourth screenplay of the day may not have a lot of patience left for wooden exchanges.
Dialogue comes from characters. Characters never say what they mean. They don’t always say the opposite of what they mean, but unless you are writing a sitcom, no character will walk into a room saying ‘I’m so annoyed today’. Dialogue will complement the visuals, the action that the character is doing, in a way the creates a third dimension to the character. Often you may need to use dialogue to explain some plot, but that is forgiven if you’ve thought about how to make it sound like your character talking.
‘What do we do now?’ or ‘I don’t know what to think’ or ‘What do you mean?’ are all bits of dialogue that make a script reader’s heart sink, and they’re already picturing themselves lowering your mark on the dialogue criterion.
Dialogue is about subtext, what characters say without telling it. If you think you’ve trimmed down the dialogue as much as you can, you usually need to do another pass on your script’s dialogue.
Theme
This is usually the least thought of element of the screenplay, yet probably the one that is certain to make your story fly. What is your story about? What is it really about? If you had to summarise the whole point of your screenplay in one word or one idea, what would it be. Loyalty, faith, identity, betrayal, honour… Those ideas that are eternal, from the old Greek or Roman myths, to Shakespeare and the great films of the past century.
What makes a story fly even higher is if the theme is not only present, but if the writer expresses a strong point of view on the theme. You’re writing a story about love – good. You’re a story about how love shouldn’t lead to sacrificing who you are – better.
The theme is what gets the reader and the audience hooked at the beginning, and what makes them satisfied at the end. Save the Cat says it should be on page 3 of your script. Mike Nichols played around with it and made it the first line of dialogue in The Graduate, and in other movies made it apparent only at the end. How you tackle it is up to you. But the theme is what your story is really about, it is why you wanted to write the story, and why the audience will remember it.
The Script Reader
‘To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme and figures of speech, then ask two questions: 1) How artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered and 2) How important is that objective?’ This is the very academic way to measure poetry that was much derided by Robin Williams’ Keating in Dead Poets Society.
The point of this article isn’t to give rules on how to write a screenplay. There is no such thing. To every rule or guide ever uttered about the arts, a hundred magnificent exceptions can be listed. These are just the key ingredients in a great screenplay. How you mix them, fold them in and stir them is your personal process. And we can’t wait to read what you come up with and support your development.
Submit to the Raindance Screenplay Competition on Coverfly.
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Baptiste is a writer hailing from the part of France where it is always sunny. After a stint in politics and earning his Master’s Degree in Management, he was a marketing intern for the 23rd Raindance Film Festival in 2015, then joined the team permanently in 2016 as the Registrar of the MA in Filmmaking. He is passionate about diversity in film, which he researches and writes about extensively. He is the producer of the hit webseries “Netflix & Kill” and the multi-award-winning short film “Alder”, as well as a writer for stage and screen. His short film “U Up?” is currently in pre-production.
