What Makes a Great Script

Good scripts ... are entertaining. They’re bursting with content, they shine with intent and unity. They have an overriding idea and work to illustrate that idea with genre moments: heartbreaking tragedy, gutbusting comedy, spine-tingling horror. Everything makes sense, every line has a purpose and intelligence, even if its only discernible after the fact.


This is from SCRIPTS EXIST TO ENTERTAIN. CHARACTER AND PLOT ARE A MEANS TO THAT END, NOT THE END ITSELF here.  This the Story Coach site, also linked on the SCRIPT COVERAGE page you'll find on one of the tabs above.

What does "entertain"  mean?  To this writer, in this context, people seek an experience in film.  If they

Parade's End

have that experience, they have been entertained.  Some people want to be educated or made to laugh or have their point of view validated or just get the hell out of their life for a couple hours. But writing is p so personal and often so solitary, how can we make sure we're doing that?

Everything makes sense, every line has a purpose and intelligence, even if its only discernible after the fact.

We could start by checking our scenes and see if they meet at least this criteria. But I thought the most significant thing in the article was this:

Movies can be bad or good, smart or dumb, noble or base, so long as they’re entertaining. It doesn’t matter if a movie is SOPHIE’S CHOICE or DEEP THROAT, so long as it engaged with the audience on some level. A Transformers movie has thin characters and an arbitrary plot – they still make bank because people all over the globe find the spectacle of giant robots fighting engaging. A movie must entertaining, to entertain they must engage with the audience’s emotion. Plot and character are means to this end, not the end itself.

If no one is invested in the story, connected to it, if they just don't give a rat's ass what is happening or will or did, that's failure to entertain. Or just failure.



Can also be found on Reddit, where you can discuss: http://www.reddit.com/r/Screenwriting/comments/2b5n90/authors_note_the_next_six_pages_arent_important_i/

Writing Women

profound__whatever reader graphic detail

There's a thread on Done Deal forums right now: Intro of a Female Character.  It started out as a writer asking for feedback on his character description and turned into a debate over ... hell, I don't know.  Does misogyny exist?  Are women only interested in money?  What's wrong with a stereotype?  But I think the point comes from profound_whatever's reader graphic under the section titled "Recurring Problems in Scripts."

Another reader who did an AMA on Reddit, also commented on the stereotypical way women are presented and mentioned they are frequently killed within a page or two of their introduction.

 Lately, there seems to be an influx of misogynistic scripts that come across a lot of our desks, too. I've heard everyone from us readers to large network executives complaining about this. I think a good idea to avoid pitfalls of this nature is to make sure you have a wide range of demos reading your script.
...what qualifies as misogyny in this context? thanks
... without getting into details of a script I recently read, I will just say that every woman in the script is portrayed as a weak sex object. Most were killed within 2 pages of their intro. So not cool. That's just one example.

THIS IS NOT A FEMINIST ISSUE

The concern of the screenwriter is writing a great story and a great script and then selling that.  Shallow stereotypes of any kind do not make for either great stories or great scripts.  And these days, your script can easily get a pass just for this reason. 

In a related thread, Small Note for Women TV Writers, the OP makes the point that women seem to be writing about some fantasy uber-woman and always making her the Hero of the series.

It's so refreshing to see a woman writer who doesn't have a woman as the main character, I can't even tell you.

Everyone needs to write people.  I think that's the lesson here.  This isn't about gender.  It's just about good writing.

To Write a Great Script ...

“Go through your script and test each incident and character to see if it can be removed from the story without damaging the whole. The ‘rule’ here is that anything that can be cut should be, because when anything non-essential is eliminated, what remains is greatly strengthened.”

—	Alexander Mackendrick (director/screenwriter)