HOW TO WASTE TIME

When someone offers to read your script, whether it's a professional reader or just a friend, you should be thankful. What that means is foresight, not hindsight. They're spending an hour or so of their time helping you, don't expect them to clean up your junk.

When your screenplay has typos and camera angles you're telling me one thing: you don't care, so why should I? If I can tell that you didn't proofread the damn thing then why should I? What, is your time more important than mine? Doubt it, at least to me.

Last night I finally downloaded a script that people, on a message board, had been raving about. It's an unproduced script by someone with obvious talent, or so it seemed as I was reading it.

At the end of 117 pages I had annotated all in my head so I could do this person a favor and post notes, a review, whatever you like.

*one character typo
*address "mom" as "Mom"
*kill the camera angles
*use "filtered" instead of "V.O." for phone conversations
*why did that character disappear and come back way late?
*get to the point quicker in the first ten pages
*check the ethics and morals of the one character, dangerous move, maybe

So, I go on, ready to post that and some good suggestions on how to resolve the problems. Paging through other's feedback, I see the scribe posted this:

"Oh, that's not my latest version, I changed that, and got rid of that character, and..."...."an email so I can send the revised script".

What did I WANT to post??
"YOU ARE A COMPLETE DUMBASS"

What DID I post?
Nothing.

As much as I feel like getting the "latest" version and posting notes, I won't do this person the favor and waste MORE of my time... except for in this post, ranting about it.

So, to you, yes, that promising screenwriter that wasted my time, you know what's wrong with your script? NOTHING, nothing I care to share with you, except this tip--

always post the most recent version of your script so you don't waste my time!

FIRST SCRIPT READ

Yesterday was a monumental moment in my screenwriting career:

the completion of my first script, the printing thereof, and my first read, provided by my Lovely Wife.

The script took a few hours to outline and pitch, a couple of weeks to write, and several days, maybe also weeks, to set and polish, which was the toughest part of the whole process.

I've wrote, read, and have rewritten this story so many times I can quote the entire thing off the top of my head. And I'm still not sick of it, good sign.

Off to the printer, sixty pages in I was out of paper. Dashed to Office Max, where I almost got sucked in an aisle to look at brads, but I maintained focus and got a ream of paper.

The printer succeeded in pumping out the whole script, I couldn't believe how thick and heavy it was (that's what she said, right?). No, I've never had a script in my hands, let alone my own; hitting someone with the thing would surely cause a concussion.

Drilling it, at this point, was out of the question (that's what he said), so I just clipped it with whatever you call the giant black clip thing with silver arms, and sent it off to my reader, who was watching a movie on the couch.

I know, I know, you're supposed to have an unbiased reader, but at this point I was dying for anyone to read it and give feedback, and Lovely Wife is a good judge of things, I'd trust her opinion over most.

Quite confident, I handed over the "Piece de Resitance", or however the french say it, I'm tired of using the latin "Opus Magnum"-- in german it would be my "Lebensarbeit", my life's work, or "Meisterstueck", meaning masterpiece.

I heard a few laughs from the other room, which bolstered my trust that this was going to be a great review. Dinner interrupting, Lovely Wife asked if she should mark typos.

TYPOS???

There's freaking typos? My heart took a little dip as I handed her a yellow highlighter, requesting that she mark anything obvious or in question.

I sat on the screened porch with the laptop as she read, watching her move back and forth from a smile, look of concern, then using the pen, and back to laughter.

Damn. Did I work hard enough? Should I have changed that line? Suddenly my rating of the script was diving fast, maybe no matter how hard I polished this thing it wasn't gleaming like a pro's work. Am I cut out for it?

She read the last page, smiled, laughed, stacked it, and looked pleased-- I headed in for the review.

Lovely Wife was thrilled, she thought it was funny, moving, realistic, had pointed out some favorite moments. Then she had a few suggestions and ideas, which were great and very much appreciated. I regained confidence as we went over different scenes, yes, it's solid.

It was a rewarding experience, now it's back to work. Another polish, some tweaking, a McGuffin change.

Nobody ever said this would be easy.