DO YOUR OWN COVERAGE: Terry Rossio's Reader Checklist

Everything below is from "Death to Readers" by Terry Rossio.  It's a checklist he developed when he worked as a reader at various places. All I did was edit it a bit, mostly recombining the bits and pieces under his original headings.

I did it for myself (I post almost all of what's here for myself) to use as a rewrite guideline.  I realized I could also use it before I start the actual writing of my next script, to save rewrite time after the first draft.  

Checklist A: Concept & Plot

Imagine the trailer. Is the concept marketable?  Are the parts castable? Does the film have roles that stars will want to play?

Who is the target audience?  What does the story have that the audience can't get from real life? Does the story transport the audience?

What is the screenplay trying to say, and is it worth trying to say it? Is there a strong emotion -- heart -- at the center of the story? Avoid mean-spirited storylines.

Is the concept original?  Is the premise naturally intriguing -- or just average, demanding perfect execution?  Is it funny, scary, or thrilling? All three?

Is it believable? Realistic? Once the parameters of the film's reality are established, they must not be violated. Limitations call for interesting solutions.

Small details add reality. Has the subject matter been thoroughly researched?

Does your story deal with the most important events in the lives of your characters?

What's at stake? Life and death situations are the most dramatic. Does the concept create the potential for the characters lives to be changed?  What are the obstacles? Is there a sufficient challenge for our heroes?

Does the screenplay create questions: will he find out the truth? Did she do it? Will they fall in love? Has a strong 'need to know' hook been built into the story?

Is there a goal? 

Is the screenplay predictable? There should be surprises and reversals within the major plot, and also within individual scenes.

Is there a decisive, inevitable, set-up ending that is nonetheless unexpected? (This is not easy to do!)



Checklist B: Technical Execution

No more than 125 pages, no less than 110... or the first impression will be of a script that 'needs to be cut' or 'needs to be fleshed out.'

Is it properly formatted?  Proper spelling and punctuation. Sentence fragments okay.

Is there a discernible three-act structure?

Are all scenes needed? No scenes off the spine, they will die on screen.

Repetition of locale. It helps to establish the atmosphere of film, and allows audience to 'get comfortable.' Saves money during production.

Begin the screenplay as far into the story as possible.

What is the hook, the inciting incident? You've got ten pages (or ten minutes) to grab an audience.

Begin a scene as late as possible, end it as early as possible. A screenplay is like a piece of string that you can cut up and tie together -- the trick is to tell the entire story using as little string as possible.

Every single line must either advance the plot, get a laugh, reveal a character trait, or do a combination of two -- or in the best case, all three -- at once.

Silent solution; tell your story with pictures. Visual, Aural, Verbal -- in that order. The expression of someone who has just been shot is best; the sound of the bullet slamming into him is second best; the person saying, "I've been shot" is only third best.

Is there pacing? Does it build?  Begin with a punch, end with a flurry. Not all scenes have to run five pages of dialogue and/or action. In a good screenplay, there are lots of two-inch scenes. Sequences build pace.

Allude to the essential points two or even three times. Or hit the key point very hard. Don't be obtuse.

Repetition and echoes can be used to tag secondary characters. Dangerous technique to use with leads.

Action and humor should emanate from the characters, and not just thrown in for the sake of a laugh. Comedy which violates the integrity of the characters or oversteps the reality-world of the film may get a laugh, but it will ultimately unravel the picture. Don't break the fourth wall, no matter how tempting.

'Character superior' sequences (where the character acts on information the audience does not have) usually don't work for very long -- the audience gets lost. On the other hand, when the audience is in a 'superior' position -- the audience knows something that the characters do not -- it almost always works. (NOTE: This does not mean the audience should be able to predict the plot!)

No false plot points; no backtracking. It's dangerous to mislead an audience; they will feel cheated if important actions are taken based on information that has not been provided, or turns out to be false.


Checklist C: Characters

The reality of the screenplay world is defined by what the reader knows of it, and the reader gains that knowledge from the characters. Unrealistic character actions imply an unrealistic world; fully-designed characters convey the sense of a realistic world.

Is the lead involved with the story throughout? Does he control the outcome of the story?

A character's entrance should be indicative of the character's traits. First impression of a character is most important.

Lead characters must be sympathetic -- people we care about and want to root for.
Audiences want to see characters who care deeply about something -- especially other characters.

Is there one scene where the emotional conflict of the main character comes to a crisis point?

What are the characters wants and needs? What is the lead character's dramatic need? Needs should be strong, definite -- and clearly communicated to the audience.

What does the audience want for the characters? It's all right to be either for or against a particular character -- the only unacceptable emotion is indifference.

Concerning characters and action: a person is what he does, not necessarily what he says.

Characters should be 'this but also that;' complex. Characters with doubts and faults are more believable, and more interesting. Heroes who have done wrong and villains with noble motives are better than characters who are straight black and white. Characters can be understood in terms of, 'what is their greatest fear?'

Character traits should be independent of the character's role. A banker who fiddles with his gold watch is memorable, but cliche; a banker who breeds dogs is a somehow more acceptable detail.

Character conflicts should be both internal and external. Characters should struggle with themselves, and with others.

Character 'points of view' need to be distinctive within an individual screenplay. Characters should not all think the same. Each character needs to have a definite point of view in order to act, and not just react.

Distinguish characters by their speech patterns: word choice, sentence patterns; revealed background, level of intelligence.

Run each character through as many emotions as possible -- love, hate, laugh, cry, revenge.

Characters must change. What is the character's arc?

Proper Grammar is Crucial - or Not

GRAMMAR: Proper grammar is crucial. You need perfect grammar, and you also need to break the rules. Certainly tenses should be consistent, words spelled correctly, and nouns and verbs should agree. On the other hand, sentence fragments are a screenwriter's stock in trade. For example, it's perfectly acceptable to write:

Anthony pushes through the jungle, toward the clearing. Suddenly three loud SHOTS are fired. Anthony peers through the leaves. One. Two. Three men lie on the ground. All dead. 

Anthony moves closer. Closer still. Right to the edge of the clearing. He can aaalllmost see what's going on --

Many grammatical rules being broken here. But they're all done on purpose. The clarity of the scene is not lessened due to the grammatical violations.

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The quote is from Points for Style* by Terry Rossio at the Wordplayer site.

I usually just put things here by other people, mostly so I can find them easily for my own purposes. But this time I'm giving advice because I am qualified by education and experience to give it:

You know what  makes a script painful to read?  A writer with no command of language.  One who is so very obviously trying so very hard to sound erudite, to appear to be experienced.  Someone who looks up synonyms online.

If you don't know the difference between connotation and definition, stop writing until you do.  If you don't use the word in your everyday life, leave it out of your screenplay unless it's technical.

Writing a Scene

Do you ever look at a scene and wonder if it's any good?  Or why you are wondering? Here's a little something that might help.

"The most I'll [Terry Rossio] say is that it might be effective to train yourself to consider, instinctively, these types of questions:"

•  What is the arresting visual image to start this scene, one that will quickly involve the audience? 
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•  What situation is immediately apparent upon cutting into the scene, or, how quickly does a situation develop? 
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•  What is the essential story point of the scene, and how clear has it been made? 
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•  How can the story point be conveyed in the most interesting manner -- using character?

(excerpted from: The Storyteller Cut)

Notes from the Masters

This post, long enough on it's own, comprises excerpts from a wonderful longer post (We're Not Worthy) by Terry Rossio at Wordplayer.com.  You'll want to read that post, I didn't even include the Steven Spielberg section here.

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RON CLEMENTS:  Ron would make a distinction by asking the question: is the idea itself bad, or is the execution of the idea bad? Very often, poor execution can cause an essentially good idea to be missed. On the other hand, sparkling execution can cause you to hang onto a something that is essentially wrong (another version of 'kill your babies.') Ron also spoke of the necessity in a film for quiet, for scenes that are purely visual -- they allow the audience to process the information given, which helps them buy into the story more fully. Wall-to-wall exposition and action can leave an audience reeling, and exhausted.

JOHN MUSKER: there is a relationship between the simplicity of the intent of a scene, and the amount of fun you can have telling it. Simple scenes and plot moves are valuable, because it allows more freedom for characterization, more 'elbow room' in the telling. Complex story points eat up space, and can limit a sequence's entertainment value (unless the complexity itself is the attraction).  Sometimes it's better to choose a simple, clear story and tell it fully, than a complex story which forces the storytelling to be sparse.

SANDRA BULLOCK:  Sandra was insistent that every character in the script have weight, have a point of view, some clear attitude to give the actor something to play. As writers, we may look at minor characters as functional chess pieces, aids in getting the story to happen. Sandra came to even the most minor characters from the point of view of the actors -- who would have to breath life into the role, make them unique, make them believable, make them real.

JOHN McTIERNAN: McTiernan's rule for exposition is so good it bears repeating: solve exposition problems by making the audience curious about your story. Once the audience is intrigued, you're no longer giving them exposition -- you're answering their questions.

NEIL GAIMAN: he made an important distinction between 'plot' (what happens) and 'story' (the way you tell the audience what happens).

JAN De BONT:  he worked with a story element I'd never considered, yet important when you think about it. Call it 'off screen movie time.' Jan paid close attention to what you could imply had just happened before the scene started, or was going to happen after the scene ended -- or what had taken place somewhere else while the scene you were watching was going on. He was very aware of what sort of events could be allowed to happen 'off screen' (important sections of the story that the audience didn't really care to see) and what things you had to show, or the audience would feel gypped. ...

As a storyteller and director, Jan was concerned with filming just enough of the tips of the icebergs to convey the greater story underneath. It's almost as if an entire second movie takes place 'in between' the scenes you show -- like in prose writing, the unwritten meaning between the lines. The mark of a good movie is when as much happens off-screen as on-screen... and you don't miss it.

DEAN DEVLIN: My favorite quote from Dean: "In this town, the ability to read a script well is as rare as the ability to write a script well."


TED ELLIOTT: It's crucial to keep character dilemmas unresolved all the way through to the end of the movie, along with the unresolved plot. There's such a temptation when you set up a character issue to resolve it too early. You want to see those people reconcile, to solve their internal dilemmas; but you have to keep pushing yourself to not play that card (and it's a fun card to play!). You have to hold back. If you resolve the character stuff too early, the plot stuff at the end turns to just be plot, usually action without meaning. And that's boring. Hold back, hold back, and resolve character issues at the same time you resolve the plot, and keep your audience interested till the end.

ROBIN WILLIAMS:  In recording sessions you could see Williams had the ability to 'hold' one series of ideas in his head (the main dialog of the story) while another part of his brain played riffs and variations, different each time through.

It was oddly reassuring for me to realize that in some cases there is just simple raw ability -- and since there's nothing to be done about it, it's nothing to worry about. "Don't let what you can't do stand in the way of what you can," John Wooden said, and it's true. And it was good to see that not everything Williams tried worked -- and after playing with it a while, if he couldn't make it happen, he'd move on, confident in his talent, confident that he could find something else great down the line.

WALTER PARKES: ... one way that Walter looks at a scene -- whether or not, aside from all the other concerns, it has story momentum. Until we worked with Walter, I'd never considered momentum as an important element, in there with theme, plot, and characterization. Momentum is a tricky thing to design into a story -- you need just enough information to build curiosity, not so much as to bog down the pace.

TERRY ROSSIO: You can become your own hero!