Early on in our screenwriting, we get notes mostly from friends, paid coverage, and other writers. But how are we supposed to know which notes to take and which ones to forgo? Like so much of what we do, experience is the best teacher. Until then, consider the following: 🧵👇 You must know what you're trying to achieve. If you don't know what story you are telling, you will have no criteria on which to base any decision. If you don't know why a scene is in the screenplay, you will have no criteria to know whether it's working or not, let alone how to execute the intention better. Always know: 1. What story you are telling. 2. What emotion are you trying to evoke? This part is solely up to you. You cannot rely on anyone else for this. Why? Because -- Most people do not know how to develop material. Do not assume they are any wiser than you. Most reader's idea of development is simply offering what they like or don't like. Try to address all of these, and you will be all over the place and soon chasing your tail. Treat any note you receive about your screenplay as data, not as directions or even recommendations. It's data. The more you collect, the better. You are mainly looking for what is not working. Does a scene have the emotional impact you want? Does the reader understand what you want them to understand when you want them to understand it? Is the reader invested in the journey? If you are asking friends or other writers to read, feel free to ask one or two of them to simply focus on the following: • What emotion (if any) they're feeling at any given moment, and... • Any spot where they start to lose interest. Many notes will be the "This is what I would have done" note. This is often a low-quality note. The way to check that is to ask does it: • Better push back against the character's journey? • Propel them further along the journey? • Tempt them to take another direction? • Deepen the experience of this specific story? • Make a moment more emotional, fun, or exciting in a way that doesn't contradict the story? If so, great! It may be a helpful note. If not, you will want to investigate -- The legendary note behind the note. You have heard this before. The idea that no matter how bad the note, it originates from something valid. My experience is this: maybe, maybe not. It's very possible the note was an unskilled way of saying, "This didn't work for me," and you need to figure out why that is and determine if it's universal or not. But the other possibility is that it's just a bad note. This happens all the time. This is why you must have a process. You cannot be at the mercy of a hundred notes coming at you at once. No project survives that. The note should feel right in your gut. You know your story better than anyone. Never take a note that doesn't feel right just because someone told you to do it. You will do plenty of that when you're getting paid. Now is not the time for that. Your goal is to tell your story to the best of your abilities. In doing that, your aim is to get people who would be prone to like your story, and get them to love it. You will never make all the readers happy. So don't try. The mental battle. Like everything in screenwriting, this is a mental battle. One side is we may believe everyone knows more than us and so we take too many notes. The other side of it is fear, insecurity, and laziness disguised as integrity, and we refuse to change anything at all. You will do yourself no favors by falling into either extreme. This job requires rigorous honesty. Know when to move on. The world will never run out of notes for your screenplay. Keep asking for them and you will keep getting them. But if you're doing it right, the law of diminishing returns eventually apply. Know when the effort outweighs the results. That's when you get it out into the world and move on to a new project. Early on, that's where you will take the biggest leaps in your writing anyway. That's a wrap for this post. If you enjoyed this post and are interested in screenwriting: 1. Follow me @storyandplot for more. 2. Repost to share. It just takes one click. :)

Stop trying to impress the reader. It's inefficient energy. Instead, focus your screenwriting on telling the story. Tell the story and make the reader feel something. Do that, and you will impress them out of their everloving minds.

You're reading someone else's screenplay. Which one is more inviting? Never mind screenwriting "rules" or TÁR. Which one would you rather read?

The dramatic question is one of your best tools for story structure in screenwriting. Two of my primary goals in the "pre-outline" phase of any project: 1) Define the story. 2) Determine the dramatic question. I do this because 🧵👇 ... just about every structural decision I make is determined by one or both. These two choices tell me what I am trying to achieve. I'm just throwing stuff up against a wall if I don't know what they are. I have no criteria for why one thing would work better over another. That's a tough way to write and an even tougher way to rewrite. So, I spend time to nail those two things down. Sometimes, it's easy; other times, it's more of a struggle. I like very specific definitions. I am less interested in classifying things and more focused on defining terms in ways that help me. So -- The Dramatic Question: A question asked in the form of dramatic conflict that the audience anticipates an answer to. In this context, we are talking about THE central dramatic question. That singular throughline that carries us from the end of Act 1 to the end of the film. Some call it the “main tension,” but I have never found that as helpful. The audience wants an answer. Yes. Or no. The protagonist has a problem they must solve, and we want to know if they solve it or not. • Will Indy secure the ark before the Nazis? • Will Jack and Rose escape the sinking ship? • Will The Avengers stop Thanos? • Will Barbie put her life back to normal? • Will the good guys win? • Will the girl get the boy? From a structural standpoint, it looks like (Fig A) in the image. The central dramatic question is the main narrative spine of the screenplay. But this central dramatic question is actually comprised of smaller dramatic questions. Smaller dramatic questions are everywhere. Dramatic writing is filled with dozens of smaller dramatic questions throughout each piece. Moment to moment, scene to scene, act to act. The dramatic question is one of the primary ways we create tension and compel the audience to watch. They want to see how the tension is resolved. So, think of a dramatic question for a scene. Say, a fight scene in John Wick. Will John Wick get through all the armed guards and kill his target Loses in the sauna? Or a romantic scene where a couple gets stuck in the elevator. Will they finally kiss? The audience will not likely rush to the bathroom and miss the resolution to this action. They wait until the immediate tension is answered before they do that. Now think of that dynamic extended out to the length of a movie. If you do it right, the audience doesn't want to give up on the movie until they know how that the central dramatic question is answered. Every scene tugs on that tension one way or the other. It's a little narrative Russian doll of dramatic questions. Moments, scenes, sequences, and acts. We use each one as a small trampoline of narrative momentum to get us through to the next one, the next one, and the next one... It ends up looking something like this (Fig B). A good dramatic question is a tangible yes or no. Will they succeed, or will they not? "What will happen?" is less helpful for the central dramatic question because it is open-ended. It's more difficult to compel the audience to keep watching because they don't really know what they're waiting for. They don't know what would be a good outcome, or what would be a bad outcome, so it's more challenging to create the tension between the two. The easiest dramatic question to build from are those tied to the protagonist's want. They have a problem; they want to solve it. That want drives scenes, and it drives the movie. If you struggle to find the dramatic question, look towards the hero's want. You might see the dramatic question staring right back at you. But do you have to have a central dramatic question? No. Do you have to have anything? Not really. If it works, it works. Plenty of character and ensemble pieces dispense with a central dramatic question. Some of my favorites include DAZED AND CONFUSED, MOONLIGHT, and ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD. (Maybe I'll do a thread on those next week!) But. Your job is just easier if you have a central dramatic question to lean on. Trust me. I encourage everyone to make decisions that make their job easier, especially early on. Telling a good story well is difficult enough, even when everything works great. Don't make it any harder than it needs to be for anything other than compelling story reasons. That's a wrap for this thread! If you enjoyed this thread and are interested in screenwriting: 1. Follow me @storyandplot for more of these 2. Subscribe to The Weekly Email 3. Like and RT this thread. It took me hours to write. It will take you just one click to share. :)