Screenplay Keys: Writing Days and Editing Days

Sometimes you simply need to break stuff up, get a breath of fresh air, take a time-out from the grind of pure creation. One way to do this -- and still keep making progress -- is to have an Editing Day after every major section of pages.

The idea is that on Editing Day you don't do any writing or create any new pages. Instead, you print out and read over whatever you've created so far; proofing, marking scenes up and looking for potential edits/changes/improvements you might want to make. This is obviously a valuable part of the process while still working on your script because it gives you an overall sense of how things are tracking and flowing, tonal or character adjustments you discover you need to make, etc.

Basically, editing days keep you marching forward while giving you a break from the actual bricklaying and hard fucking work of writing.

I take editing days at the logical junctures -- first ten pages (hook), the first thirty (First Act), then intermittently throughout -- probably the Midpoint around p. 55 or 60, definitely end of Second Act, and then I'll read the Third Act as a stand-alone thirty pages as well. This seems to be the right amount for me -- too much editing can fuck up good pages, too little can leave you without an accurate understanding of what's working and what's not.

While we're on the subject of editing, here's an epic no-no for anyone and everyone writing a screenplay, veteran and newbie alike. Perhaps the most important piece of advice offered in this entire book --

Never edit the fresh pages you've written the same day you write them.

Repeat -- Never, ever do this. Give these newborns at least two days minimum before going over them again -- in fact, a full week is a thousand times better.

Here's why -- when you edit the same day you write, you end up cutting/hating on/killing off a ton of material that was actually pretty good upon later, rested, clear-eyed reflection. You're too close, my friends, you can't see forest through the proverbial trees, and your exhaustion and frustration with what you've inked in -- which NEVER appears to be good enough vs. what you'd originally intended -- will psych you out and black-cloud what's left of your mind.

How do I know? From vast, sprawling, tragicomic experience. Done this silly shit to myself a million times. Using that final, deflating hour of a brutal day's work to hack up pages that are actually pretty decent, repeatedly tweak and fuss over lines of dialogue until they're nothing but mush, and damn-near every other bone-headed thing a writer can do last minute to destroy their own project. It's tantamount to blowing off your own foot with a .357 because your sock's bugging you.

Don't do it. Put the gun down. Forty-eight hour waiting period at least. Trust me, you'll thank me for saving a lot of innocent, workable pages from the slaughterhouse.

What's that old playground saying? "He who turns and runs away lives to fight another day?" Yeah, that.