Screenwriting is Rewriting Screenplays aren’t written. They are rewritten and rewritten and rewritten. Alexander Mackendrick, Writer/Director, The Man In The White Suit, The Ladykillers The experience of writing Cider House has confirmed what I’ve always believed as a writer, that the most important and essential element of writing is rewriting. John Irving, Screenwriter/Novelist, The World According to Garp, Cider House Rules As a kid I was a terrible writer. I was inarticulate and made C’s on my writing papers, until I transferred schools in the tenth grade and suddenly starting getting’s A’s. Why? Two reasons. One, because I started reading fiction with a passion. Two, I learned the value of revision—the rewrite. Tom Schulman, Screenwriter, Dead Poets Society, Honey I Shrunk The Kids I’d write it to the end and go back and write it all over again, go back and write it all over again, go back and write it all over again. I think I probably wrote, without exaggeration, about twenty drafts of A Few Good Men. Aaron Sorkin, Screenwriter/Playwright, A Few Good Men, West Wing, The Social Network For My Family Cynthia, Liza, and Kerri Screenwriting is Rewriting The Art and Craft of Professional Revision Jack Epps, Jr. Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc Contents Introduction How To Use This Book Let’s Talk About Rewriting The Pass Method—Layer By Layer Movies You Need To See Part 1 Foundations and Fundamentals 1 Notes—Receiving and Organizing Notes 2 Interpreting Notes—Reading Tea Leaves 3 The Annotated Draft—A Reference Guide To Your Rewrite 4 Game Plan—Creating the Road Map for the Rewrite 5 Character—Writing from the Inside Out 6 Foundation Pass—Strengthening the Core 7 Character Pass—The Emotional Core 8 The Set-Up—Establish—Complicate—Resolve 9 Story and Theme Pass—The Emotional Underpinning 10 Structure—What Stays In, What Goes Out, and In What Order? 11 Structure Pass—Architecture and Design 12 Plot—How Will This Turn Out? 13 Plot Pass—Cause and Effect 14 Feedback on Your Interim Draft—Checking-In Part 2 Layering and Details 15 Opposition Characters—Sources of Conflict and Tension 16 Complications, Obstacles, Reveals, and Reversals—Complicate, Complicate, Complicate 17 Complications, Obstacles, Reveals, and Reversals Pass—Making Life Much More Difficult 18 Relationships—The Ties that Bind 19 Relationship Pass—Interconnecting 20 Scene Pass—Link and Connect 21 Dialogue Pass—Rhythm and Flow 22 Consistency Pass—Quality Control 23 Polish Pass—Dialogue, Text, and Tightening 24 Sending Out Your Screenplay—Letting Go 25 Working With Directors, Producers, & Executives—Navigating the Executive Experience Part 3 Screenwriters on Rewriting Robert Towne Frank Pierson Susannah Grant Part 4 Examples Studio Script Notes Turner & Hooch Notes Sister Act Game Plan and Studio Notes Student Annotated Pages Suicide Girl by Ivy Pruss Student Notes and Game Plans Take Your Grandma To Work Day by David Ngo F@#% The Knot by Romi Barta Essential Three Act Questions Acknowledgments Works Cited Index Introduction Writing is creating something out of nothing. Rewriting is creating something out of what is there. Robert Towne, Writer/Director, The Last Detail, Chinatown, Mission Impossible II Many writers find rewriting to be a mysterious process and flounder around aimlessly playing musical words. They have a love-hate relationship with the task and would rather run barefoot over hot coals than face a rewrite. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Rewriting, when done right, can be satisfying and rewarding. It demands a great deal of deconstruction and reconstruction, reconfiguring and reconceiving. To succeed you need a plan of attack: to analyze, organize, problem-solve, and execute. There can be no wasted lines or pointless scenes in a screenplay. It is not about just changing words; rewriting is about stripping away all the dead and irrelevant parts, and finding the heart and core of your characters and story. Everything has to contribute to the whole. There is a famous quote attributed to the renowned sculptor, Michelangelo: “Every block of stone has a statue inside of it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” Let’s rewrite the quote for screenwriting: “Every screenplay has a movie inside of it and it is the task of the screenwriter to discover it.” It’s my firm belief that rewriting made my career. While I was an undergraduate at Michigan State University, I had an intimidating creative writing instructor, Virgil Scott, who drilled the importance of rewriting into my head by demanding I rewrite a short story over and over again. Scott was a published author and someone I didn’t want to disappoint. After initial resistance (the normal reaction of all writers), much to my surprise the story got better, and the importance of rewriting was hammered home. When my remarkable partner, Jim Cash, and I began to work together, we spent over two years and five major drafts getting our first spec script into shape to send out to the town. From my experience as a production assistant and a reader, I realized there was only one way to enter the business, and that’s at the top with a professional seamless screenplay. No one says “nice try” in Hollywood. The screenplay form is very conducive for rewriting. It’s not a novel and not read as literary material. A screenplay is part stage play and part blueprint. A screenplay can be broken into many component pieces and is malleable in a way that novels and plays are not. Individual scenes can be swapped out with relative ease, and entire characters can disappear and new ones appear in their place. Unlike a novel, the focus of a screenplay is not on the writing, but on the characters and their stories, the visual images and the driving narrative—in other words, storytelling. A screenplay is a guide for directors, actors, cinematographers, set decorators, production designers, visual effects artists, and an entire crew of creative people who use it to focus and coordinate their work. Filmmaking is a collaborative art, and the screenplay is a statement of the shared vision of what the final film should be. Rewriting makes everyone a better writer. To rewrite successfully, you must understand how all the screenwriting elements work together to form a cohesive script. Rewriting also teaches you what you must know before you start your next screenplay. Rewriting is always a challenge, but there is a great deal of satisfaction when you see how far you have taken your screenplay, and how much closer it is to your original intention. If you are serious about becoming a professional screenwriter, then you must become a diligent rewriter. There are no successful screenwriters who are not good at