PHASE 6: Writing the script

Paul Guyot and his father watching Monday Night Football.

Once I get notes back from my two readers, I will go through them and decide which I want to address and which I don’t. I will often take most of the notes because I trust these folks. I know them as people and as screenwriters, and they know me.

Avoid going back too soon at all costs. I will never go back to a first draft in less than a week, and I prefer it to be three to four weeks if life allows.

In dialogue, subtext is everything. Whether your characters sing flowery, poetic words or spit uneducated, grammar-challenged ramblings, you must write with inherent subtext if you want your dialogue to be as good as it can be.

It’s the emotion, the heart, the imagination, the writing.

Here for the first time ever, is the TRUTH about what grabs a reader in the early pages of a screenplay: Good writing.

What Write What You Know DOES mean is . . . Write what’s inside you. Write what frightens you. Write what excites you. Write what compels you. Write the things YOU KNOW.

like so many writers in history, have battled mental health and