How Can I Make My Screenplay Better?

BETTER?

How Can I Make My Screenplay Better?

While serving my screenwriting life-sentence, I've become a complete believer in the concept that everything can always be better.

Bad scripts can be boosted to sample-worthy -- say "B" instead of "F". Good can be refashioned into Great, "Pass" upgraded to "Consider". And the Great? The Great can be elevated to the Even Greater Still.

This legendary Shunryu Suzuki quote I heard via Pema Chodron perfectly sells the conceit --

"Each of you is perfect exactly the way you are... and you can each use a little improvement."

And so it goes for Hollywood screenplays as well.

One of my favorite examples of making great things even greater is from Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential (I'm going to pray like hell that even the most clueless among you have seen the film. If not, see it a.s.a.p. -- as in, tonight.).

Take a look at that outrageously good first scene between Officer Bud White (Russell Crowe) and high-class call girl Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger) at her home. Bud knocks to find Lynn and an Older Gentleman doing their thing with This Gun For Hire screening in background. When Bud tells the older trick to leave, the guy fronts like the tough guy character in the film --

BUD -- Hit the road, gramps.

Bud enters. The Older Gentleman strikes a pose. He still thinks he's Alan Ladd.

OLDER GENTLEMAN -- Maybe I will, maybe I won't.

BUD -- (flips badge) L.A.P.D. shitbird. Get the fuck out of here or I'll call your wife to come get you.

Sputtering, the Older Gentleman exits with his clothes in hand.

And that's where the scene in my draft ends.

However -- when watching the film, you'll notice a tiny tweak was made. The addition of two meager new lines tagging this exchange which elevates the encounter to another level entirely --

BUD -- (flips badge) L.A.P.D. shitbird. Get the fuck out of here or I'll call your wife to come get you.

Sputtering, the Older Gentleman exits with his clothes in hand.

OLDER GENTLEMAN -- Officer.

BUD -- Councilman.

Earlier pass, the guy was just some random John, could've been anybody. Which is fine and totally works. But by surgically adding those two lines -- the right two words, actually -- Helgeland and Hanson underscored the darker subtext informing their entire film; the relentless corruption saturating every strata of Los Angeles, down to its deepest roots.

Two words. Pretty fuckin' good, right? One of the many, many reasons these guys get paid the big bucks.

(You'll also notice they double their money later, giving this same new "Councilman" a quick scene reversing his vote on the highway project -- the swing vote which allows it to pass -- and all because Pierce Patchett has been keeping evidence of his carnal indiscretions with girls like Lynn.)

So -- was this small but essential tweak made in a later draft? I'm not sure, but I have the final shooting script and don't remember seeing any evidence of it. Perhaps Hanson and Helgeland added it on set? Always a possibility. Or perhaps Russell Crowe and the actor playing the Councilman simply ad-libbed it during the scene. Who knows? I suppose you'd probably have to ask someone who was there when they shot it.

However it came about, the key point is this -- Hanson, Helgeland and Co. didn't stop spitballing and settle for merely great. There was no resting on their proverbial laurels. They kept on pushing and challenging themselves to take it to that next level, to find even sharper, stronger layers and fixes.

Oh, yeah -- they won an Oscar for their troubles.

Key to your own evolution as a screenwriter is accepting the premise that whatever you've written, however good it may appear at first blush, however strong the coverage or feedback, whatever you may make selling it, your script can always be made better. Simple fact, my friends. Paul Schrader's famous comment that "Screenwriting is rewriting" is every bit as prescient now as in his Taxi Driver days.

Everything can always be better. No writer breaking into this biz is exempt from the continual need for improvement. Writing "Final Draft" on your title page won't fool a soul; no such animal exists for writers developing material. Whether paid for or purely speculative, should you fail to take the initiative, count on somebody else in the mix demanding it of you.

There are no free passes in this department -- nor should there be.