I’ve been poring over the notes I’ve received, and included within were a few suggestions for improvements, including cutting back on the use of CAPITAL LETTERS for emphasis.  In fact, it was recommended I cut them out altogether.

I always thought doing that really got the point across, especially for really active verbs. Add that to the list of things to consider/investigate.

It was also mentioned that I could cut about 4-5 pages if I eliminated my ‘directing the action’ in so many scenes.

Directing? Me?

I looked over some of the pages in question, and wouldn’t you know it? They were right.

This isn’t about camera angles or more technical aspects.  I put in too much detailed description of the action between lines of dialogue, or give too much of a suggestion how a line should be delivered.

Apparently I do it a lot, not even realizing I was doing it.

I’ve always made an effort to avoid an excessive use of adverbs and parentheticals, but this really is something new.  While it’s something I’ll definitely need to work on in the future, making the appropriate fixes this time around doesn’t seem to be too challenging.

At least for now.

Teaching myself to not do this seems a little daunting at first, but the person who pointed this out to me added that he’s been a working screenwriter for 30 years and is still learning.

So there may be hope for me yet.

Just wondering – has there ever been something about your writing that was pointed out to you that completely caught you by surprise?

-This post was written during a very quiet Christmas morning shift at work. Hope you made watching a movie part of your day. Happy holidays!  One of my gifts was the COMEDY FILM NERDS GUIDE TO MOVIES, which comes from the always-entertaining and incredibly hilarious podcast of the same name. Definitely worth subscribing to. Please note the very apt ‘explicit’ tag on iTunes.