Scratchings for a Good Script · Scratchings

Listen more, Think less

Best dialogue isn’t invented. It’s overheard.
Eavesdrop everywhere — work, the bar, friends. No shame when art is on the line.
Don’t listen to what people say. Listen to the music: their cadence, where they break a sentence, their personal slang.
How do people curse? Who do they curse in front of? When do they refrain?
Note unique sayings passed down to people from friends, family, coworkers, etc.
People give themselves away in rhythm and reactions before words. We are beautifully contradictory creatures and often expose our thoughts.
These notes are the same for any field. An actor collects behavior. A photographer hunts shots. So do alcoholics, for that matter…
In summary: Steal constantly! Then write it down or lose it. Forgetting good ideas is easy.

When you sit down to write, relax.
Write like you’re having a real conversation. Strip it to taste after.
Your natural voice is often best. Formal voice bleeds into theatrics, which has its own time and place.
You already talk like a person. That’s the whole skill.

Exactamento beats generale, every time.
Not “an old car.” The ’08 Jeep with the cracked windshield and ducks across the dash.
Specific is iconic; vague bores.
In spite of this, when embracing trends, specific will date your piece. This is a grey area: the piece will either become timeless for its era-defining nature, or be dated in the most mundane, monstrous manner!

Every scene: someone wants something, something’s in the way. Conflict Required.
The want can be over the world ending, or an ugly tablecloth. Could be the same thing in the given scene.
No want = dead scene. You’re typing blee bloo blah blahs. Humanity doesn’t need blee bloo blah blahs. The robots already have that covered, and you don’t want to be a bot!
Slack in your belts usually means your engine is off. Either the want reached its destination too early, or the obstacle(s) walked off.
Find the want. Block it. Then poof! Drama!!!

Almost never the fault of a blank page. Almost always a tell.
Either: A character did something they weren’t supposed to. The action could’ve fit them fine, but bled the momentum of the scene and wrote you into a hole.
Or: The present wants to go where the past never earned. Scene’s fine, but the previous story isn’t. Which goes hand in hand with the previous stipulation.
Don’t push harder. Walk it back. The fix is often behind you, not ahead.
Now, a good ending can save a bad start, but good luck convincing people to swim through trash.

Forget everything you know about living life. In dramatic storytelling, start as close to the scene’s end as the story can withstand.
Cut the second the point lands. Victory laps are gratuitous.
Introductory exposition, meaningless small talk? CUT IT!
Slack often hides in the first and last 60 seconds.
Push the audience to fill in the holes with the characters. Respect your audience.

Characters: real, dimensional, free from our own thoughts and philosophies.
Always feel free to draw from your experiences to write an authentic story, but NEVER, and I mean NEVER, self-insert. If it’s not an autobiography, writers should not be role-playing. If an audience wanted to see that, they’d watch standup or improv. Good stories are about your characters. NOT YOU! Let them stand on their own.
As for building your characters, they’ll always have more history than what’s explained, but that history still lives in how they carry themselves and react to others.
The best characters surprise you, the writer. People are unpredictable. That’s what makes us worth watching. So…
Don’t flatten your characters to stay on schedule.
Don’t shove your hand up their rear to puppet-push the plot.
Great characters are built “of” your message, not “for” it.
Once they exist, let them act as they would — even against your own plans.
Follow the surprises, but note the following:
Real surprises open the story up. Wrong surprises can shut it down.
If the scene gets more alive, follow it. If the room goes quiet in a bad way, if you can’t figure out what comes next? That’s your tell… it’s a bad surprise.

The most important line is the one nobody says.
People often talk around what they want, not at it.
“Are you cold?” is more than the surface question. It can mean “raise the thermostat,” “let’s go inside,” “give me your jacket.” Understand what your characters want, but don’t force them to say it if they’re not the type to be direct. Many people aren’t.
Write the surface. Let the want sit underneath.
Characters who say exactly what they mean aren’t characters. They’re memos.

On the wall in act one, fires by act three.
If you hang it, it better fire.
Don’t load a gun you won’t fire. And DEFINITELY DON’T fire one you never loaded.

Track every one. Every promise gets paid.
A dropped thread is a debt the audience feels even if they can’t name it.
Note that payoff ≠ a clean answer, a bow, or everyone wins/loses.
It means the thread completes its path.
Ambiguity counts as completion — but only if the characters carry the depth to earn it. Built deep enough, the open question lands as inevitable. But reach for ambiguity chasing “profounditifulness,” and they’ll feel you reaching.
An open end is earned the same as a closed one.

The world doesn’t exist to hold your plot.
It breathes with the characters: its own weather, rules, history. Keeps living off-page, always changing.
If it only moves when the protagonist walks through it, they’re a child playing make-pretend in a cardboard fort in the backyard.

Your favorite lines can be the ones bleeding the scene.
Is it there because it’s clever, or because it’s needed? If just the first — cut it!
Save it in a scrap file if it hurts. You still won’t use it, but storing it helps the pain.
“Let the first draft be bad” is a famous saying. I disagree personally with the framing, but it works for some people. To get more specific, a bad draft may be one you work on thinking it’s fantastic, only to realize later it could work better. But find out what works for you and go with it. Either way, keep moving. You’ll eventually come back and fill all the holes.

The script isn’t the finished product. It’s a blueprint others build on. An actor will find a beat you didn’t write. The camera will say what your words couldn’t. The light, the room, the silence between lines — that’s authorship too. But not always your doing.
Over-specify and you risk smothering the people who build with you.
Write what has to be true. Let the rest get discovered.

None of this is concrete. None of it a formula.
Good work comes from the gut and a good pair of ears.
Read it back. Imagine it being produced. Does it feel right? Sound right?
If not — good. You have vision. Nothing’s stopping you from making something great!