You’ve finished a screenplay. But how do you know if your script's ready to send out? How do you know when it’s “finished”?
Here's our ultimate 12-point questionnaire to find out whether your script is ready to take on the world. Or if it's not quite there. Yet.
Answering these twelve questions will determine how much work you’ve put into the script and also into the craft of writing in general. Assessing “craft + draft” will give you a pretty good idea of whether your script’s good to go.
(Sometimes you may find it hard to pick an answer, so just pick the one that comes closest to your position.)
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A script is just a blueprint for a movie. In this sense, it’s impossible for a script to be “finished” by an aspiring writer sitting in his/her living room.
If it’s bought, it’ll only be the start of a long collaborative process between you (hopefully) and the studio. It’ll be rewritten, probably multiple times and often by other writers. However, it is important to get your script into the best possible state it can be before sending it out.
You need to be able to honestly say you’ve done everything humanly possible to make it as good as it can be.
Far too many aspiring writers ignore this step, though, and send out their work when it’s nowhere near ready. Then, it inevitably gets rejected and despondency sets in. Follow the guidelines in this questionnaire, however, and you will not only avoid this, but know what to do next instead.
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How do you know when your script’s finished and ready to send out? Do you use the same or similar guidelines to our own? Let us know in the comments section below.
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