Visit http://ScriptXRay.com more free articles on screenwriting.

It's been pretty busy here in LA -- thanks to all of you who requested me at ScriptShark.com! Speaking of which, I've been noticing quite a few submissions around town in need of some serious polishing. What's up with that?

As aspiring screenwriters, it's your responsibility not only to provide an exceptional story for the screen, but a polished piece of writing as well. Here's a short checklist of polishing points to keep in mind before submitting your screenplay to script competitions, production companies, agencies, or even friends for that matter:

1. Spelling
It's the number one screenplay killer in terms of simple mistakes. It's easy to spellcheck your work, but your program simply won't catch everything.

2. Homophones
It's part of the reason spelling is the number one killer. Your spellcheck program won't catch incorrect uses of homophones, such as witch, which, were, we're, there, their, they're, and more. "Keep a sharp eye," as Captain Jack says.

3. Grammar
Though you are writing for a visual medium, you still need to respect the craft of screenwriting. While the craft allows for fragment sentence use, amplification of narrative through visual look of text on the page, and more concision that hardcore journalism, you still need to stay as close to classical grammar guidelines as possible. Avoid going overboard with the exclamation points, consider learning what symbols actually mean (dash informs interruption, ellipses informs missing dialogue or a slight pause). Remember, keep it as simple as possible.

4. Formatting
I'm assuming you either use your choice of online screenwriting software (stay tuned for more on that later) or Final Draft; if you don't, you're reader will know and you and your screenplay won't be taken seriously. Issues with formatting is far from a screenplay killer (unless you're incorrectly formatting your description, dialogue, and other elements), but it's still distracting when reading. What I'm talking about is the scene header at the bottom of your page, the character name at the bottom of the page, the dialogue severed from the name at the top of the page, and other technical formatting issues. Keep it clean. Use your best judgement. Adjust the ill-formatted elements by either trimming your work a bit (a sort of face lift in a way) or, if it's the beginning of an element at the bottom of a page, consider adding an extra line of space above your element, thereby pushing the element to the next page. Cheating format this way is definitely okay ... just so long as your reader doesn't notice it.

5. Style
This is often confused for formatting, but elements such as capitalization, font face, including bold face, italics, and underlined, camera, and sound direction all need to be checked for professionalism. As a reader, I define professional writing as "concise." Do you really need that camera direction? Does that sound have to be capitalized? Does that minor character need all that description? In my book ... or blog I guess ... the answer is no. I'm a strong believer in avoiding the inclusion of camera direction, capitalized sound effects, and long, unnecessary description. It's just all about concision! The rule including the idea that you need to cap every sound in your work in order to let producers and production crew know when there needs to be sound equipment on set is a complete fallacy. If a producer needs to be told this, then they probably shouldn't be producing. Likewise, there will always be sound equipment on set ... so ... yeah. It simply doesn't make sense. It might be what several screenwriter teachers swear by, but I contend that it's a "rule" of the past. Ask a teacher how to write and they'll give you a dozen rules; ask a writer how to write, and they'll probably tell you something along the lines of, "you apply your pen to your paper," or "you apply your seat to the chair." Simply put, there's no right or wrong way -- this is why I stress the idea of guidelines, not rules.

Write how you will, but keep in mind the above checklist before actually submitting your work to a reader. As a reader, I can tell you that we're passionate about story, screenplays, writing, words, grammar, and the overall craft. This simple checklist will insure that you submit a solid, polished piece of writing.



C.J. Rice is a professional story analyst in Los Angeles. He's currently working on writing, producing, and directing his own projects includuing feature-length screenplays, short films, and cross-media projects. After spending years reading hundreds of submissions for such companies as Gold Circle Films, Josephson Entertainment, Parkway Productions, and ScriptShark.com, he launched ScriptXRay.com, a study of the screenwriting art and craft for screenwriters and filmmakers interested in looking beyond the surface of screenwriting. For more on C.J. visit http://cjrice.org.

If you'd like C.J. to read your screenplay, visit http://ScriptShark.com and request "CR."