All My Thoughts on What Makes a Great Screenplay

A long but informative article on what I believe makes a fantastic screenplay...

Everyone has a different opinion about what makes something high-caliber material, just so-so, absolutely garbage, or a hidden-gem of a masterpiece.

I’ve read A LOT of material for both work, and pleasure. From professional, to first time writers. A majority of those scripts were mediocre or “okay”, and only a small handful outstanding. The outstanding ones almost always ended up being produced or already were. That being said, there’s been at least a dozen scripts I’ve read that I’m still shocked haven’t been made into movies (and no, I’m not talking about my own scripts… Okay, maybe I am… Kidding.)

A fantastic script has this quality about it that’s a bit like a book. You don’t want to put it down and you’ve put a face to all the characters, and the world — even if fictitious — has come to life in your mind’s eye.

Basically, the writer has done their job of stimulating the reader’s imagination. Even with the format of a screenplay — with all its unaesthetic slug-lines, and parentheticals, and mores and cont’ds. The great blueprint of the motion picture wasn’t designed to be read by anyone other than the actors. A script is ultimately, or eventually, pieces of paper used to guide the production along. A shooting draft, shall we say. How cold and calculated of me to say. But that’s what it is.

A great screenplay, even if extremely technical and methodical in its style and formatting, translates a story to whoever reads it. It moves them, frightens them, intrigues them, or makes them laugh, cry or angry.

I think many confuse a powerful hook / opening to a screenplay with something gimmick-like, or spectacle-oriented (You can have spectacle, by the way, but the point I’m making is, interest must be created from somewhere else).

Why is the action we’re seeing important? How can you set up stakes lightening fast? How can you begin a mystery without giving too much away, or, being too vague and esoteric?

I’ve found with my favorite scripts that they move along quite fast, and that I’m constantly tearing through the pages, looking for answers to questions posed. It’s electric. Dynamic. Even if the script is 120 pages (Don’t make yours that long, if you can avoid!)

Is pace learned? Or is it an acquired skilled?

It’s hard to translate how important flow and rhythm in writing is. It’s like the undercurrent of the story; it mutates, and takes form, and possesses you without you, the reader, even realizing.

A protagonist doesn’t need to be worth rooting for, but they do need to fascinate you. Whether that’s some secret they have — that’s wildly original, and also connects to the plot at hand and isn’t just character exposition.

Some people say a character shouldn’t service a plot.

But, in my opinion, a character only exists in a plot. They’re one in the same. Integral to each other. And a character must have their own life that exists within the story, not one that feels disjointed. You can write a wonderfully developed character for the wrong story. I see it all the time; an interesting protagonist who’s part of an adventure or mystery that just feels awkward.