Rewriting Your Script, Part 9: Polish
Since dozens of writers used Go On Your Own Quest to pound out a first draft of their original screenplay, I decided to start off the New Year with a week-long series on rewriting, to honor their commitment and effort, and to encourage them [and everyone else] on their creative journey.
We’ve all heard the adage, “Writing is rewriting,” right? Perhaps nowhere is that more true than screenwriting. Aspiring screenwriters know this because of the number of drafts they go through to whip their script into readable shape. Professional screenwriters understand this because of the multiple drafts they do on any project, whether on spec or assignment.
Rewriting is just the nature of the screenwriting beast.
But that begs the question: How? What are some keys to the rewriting process? Instead of wandering around in the dark not knowing if you’re improving the story or not, is there a coherent approach to rewriting your scripts?
First off, the same thing applies to rewriting as to writing: There is no right way to write. There is no right way to rewrite. Every writer is different. Every story is different. And every rewrite is different.
That said, this week I will lay out some keys to the process. If they help you, great. Use them with my blessing. If they don’t help you, feel free to chuck them.
Part 9: Polish
What is a script polish? To my knowledge, there’s nothing codified in Hollywood, but generally I think it’s safe to say the term gets used to refer to this: Taking a script that is fundamentally sound in terms of characters and structure, and improving it in one or more areas, bringing it to final draft status [or nearly so].
But what does it mean in actual practice? Here are six areas to focus on in a script polish:
Tighten the script: Almost every script, no matter how many drafts you’ve written, can benefit from being tightened up. If you are honest with yourself and can look at your pages with an objective eye, you will almost certainly find elements you can trim or even cut altogether.
Start with scenes. Go through every one of them and ask some fundamental questions: Is this scene absolutely necessary? Why? What is the point of the scene? Does it accomplish that? Could I enter the scene later? Could I exit the scene sooner? Does the scene advance the plot? Is the scene entertaining? If you hesitate answering any of these questions with a positive response, you should unpack that scene and see if there is a way to do it better, or perhaps drop it entirely.
Move onto dialogue. You can ask a similar litany of questions for every side of dialogue. Is this absolutely necessary? Why? What is the point of the side? Does it accomplish that? Could I make it work better by trimming it? Could I make the scene work better by cutting the side? Is the side entertaining? Again if you stumble in answering any of these questions positively, consider your options regarding that dialogue.
Be especially tough when it comes to exposition. In general, most writers tend to include too much in the way of information and facts. Less is almost always more when it comes to dialogue that conveys exposition.
Work on pace: There is no set paradigm to coordinate a script’s pace, but perhaps the closest lens through which to assess a story’s tempo is the idea of balance. For example:
- Whereas Act One may be heavier with exposition and character introductions, basically setting up the story universe, Act Three will generally tilt more toward action as the narrative propels toward the Final Struggle and resolution.
- Scenes come in different types: Action, Interaction, Exposition, Revelation being four major ones. It stands to reason you don’t want to stack up five Exposition scenes back to back, then four Interaction scenes, rather balance them out: An Action scene, followed by an Interaction scene, an Exposition scene, followed by a Revelation scene. This way you create a tempo that has variety in its flow.
- Of particular concern are so-called “talking head” scenes wherein two or more characters stand or sit and exchange dialogue. Some times, this is precisely what a script needs, however too many talking head scenes can slow the pace of a story. Plus they are inherently not cinematic.
Pace is one of the more nuanced aspects of screenwriting and for a professional writer, much of it derives from their instinct, they just feel the rhythm of a story. What you can do in a polish is read through the script once strictly focused on pace, how it moves. If at any time, you feel it drags or conversely moves too fast, consider switching the order of scenes, or reconceiving scenes so they play at a different tempo.
Track the emotion: You should have a clear sense of your Protagonist’s metamorphosis, typically playing out in four movements: Disunity, Deconstruction, Reconstruction, Unity. Are the Protagonist’s actions and reactions in each section of the script consonant with his/her metamorphosis arc?
Likewise review each subplot that consists of a relationship between a key character and the Protagonist. Do their scenes together flow naturally as part of the Protagonist’s metamorphosis?
Finally consider the emotion that is in play in each scene. Is it too much, perhaps over the top or even melodramatic? Conversely maybe you haven’t mined enough of the emotional depth of the moment. Does a scene play the emotion too on the nose or in a clichéd fashion? Could you approach the emotion in a surprising way, even to the point of going at it entirely opposite as might be expected?
Do not underestimate the importance of a script’s emotional content. No matter how great or entertaining the events of your plot, if they do not mean anything of substance to the characters, they will mean even less to a reader.
Punch up the dialogue: The first pass at polishing a script’s dialogue is to make sure each line plays to the story’s genre. If you have a comedy, you want to maximize opportunities for humor in your dialogue. If it’s a horror story, then you want to focus on creating scares. If it’s an action script, work on making the dialogue as action-packed as possible.
This is also an area where you can impact a story’s pace. How? Because no story is solely played as a single genre throughout, rather there are moments in stories, regardless of genre, where there is humor, drama, scares, and so on. Thus if you are writing an action script, you may need humor to break up the tension. Sometimes one good line of dialogue can provide that release. On the other hand, if you are writing a comedy, you may need a moment for some characters to get real to remind the reader of the emotional stakes of the story, so perhaps a few sides with some dramatic edge to them.
And of course, you will want to do a subtext check. Sometimes you need to write dialogue that conveys precisely what the character means to say. However it is often more interesting to hear characters not say what they mean, only convey their truth through subtext. So spot-check every side of dialogue to see if the scene or moment benefits from the character avoiding telling the truth in an on the nose way, choosing [consciously or not] to use an oblique or roundabout way of communicating.
Highlight themes: This is something most writers will definitely work on in a script polish as the multitude of themes in a story often tend to emerge late in the process. Here again you can zero in on subplot relationships to the Protagonist as each one will typically have a slightly different flavor or angle on the story’s central theme.
Ask yourself: Does this subplot relationship have a theme? If so, what is it? If not, am I missing something deeper going on with these characters? Can I articulate this sub-theme? Does it support and expand the meaning of the central theme?
Special tools of the trade are talismans, physical objects that take on symbolic meaning. You may well have surfaced some object[s] in your story that are sitting there just waiting to be used to help enhance a story theme. Think about the snow globe in Citizen Kane, Harvey Dent’s coin in The Dark Knight, or the ring in The Lord of the Rings. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a talisman can translate into the equivalent of multiple sides of dialogue, saying much more visually than anything you can write through a character’s words.
Make the script more cinematic: Before you finish your script polish, do a read-through where you look at each moment strictly through the perspective of its cinematic potential. Have you maximized visual opportunities for your story? Are there ways to approach scenes that conjure up images in the mind of a reader? Are there visual elements that have emerged in your writing that you can tie together to create an imagematic motif? Think of the color red in American Beauty or the use of water in Inception.
A final delicate cinematic touch: Track the transitions between each scene. Are there ways you can make those jumps using visuals such as this incredibly deft cut [at the 1:17 mark] in Lawrence of Arabia. Visual-to-visual transitions can not only smooth segues from one scene to another, they can also enhance a script’s cinematic feel.
With a script polish, you are trying to take what doesn’t work in a draft and make it work, and take what works in your script and make it work better. Your goal is to give your story a sheen of completeness that reflects the writer’s deep immersion into the story and great care with which they have crafted the narrative.
You may think you are finally done. You are not. You have one last set of steps in your writing adventure: The final Edit. That is the subject of tomorrow’s post, the last in this series.
Part 7: Scene-By-Scene Breakdown
FYI: Tom Benedek will be teaching the next session of Pages II: Rewriting Your Script through Screenwriting Master Class beginning February 18.
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