I'm lucky I caught this before officially sending my script to competition but I was laughing because I made the dumbest mistake ever.
After spending a while making sure my short film script was absolutely solid I was about to send it when I realized the title I sent them was completely different than the one I sent them in my title page LOL. Granted, it was a slight error but still wouldn't be a good look if right away the writer doesn't even know what their script is called.
This is a perfect example of even the tiniest mistake can hurt you! Even after your script is polished, don't accidentally type in the wrong title when sending it to a competition!
This happened because after my second draft I had changed the title and sent them my old one from muscle memory. Don't do what I did guys!
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LOL. Easily done. I have dyslexia and some of the errors I find, sometimes years after I've written a script and at the top of the first page can have my head in my hands.
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CJ Walley oh man I never even thought about the writers out there who deal with dyslexia!
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Ryu Reeves neither do most script competitions and evaluation services. It sucks.
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CJ Walley oh my god that's true!! That actually sucks so much!
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Thanks for the heads-up, Ryu Reeves. Glad you caught the mistake. That reminds me of the time I changed a character's name in a script last minute. I read over the script one last time, and the old name was still in the script. Final Draft has an option to change a word throughout the whole script, and I usually use that, but I didn't this time.
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Maurice Vaughan Wait I forgot Final Draft can do that! I'm still trying to get used to it cause I used WriterDuet forever and only used Final Draft for a single script like 2 years ago maybe. I'm just now getting back to writing consistently and now trying to get used to Final Draft
It's a great feature, Ryu Reeves. And it saves time. I use WriterDuet as a backup, but Final Draft is easier for me, and I like the Final Draft layout better. I still want to try out the outline feature in Final Draft. Maybe for my next script. I've also been learning the other features in Final Draft in case I need to use them.
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Maurice Vaughan Yea i need to take a day and just play around with all their features because their outline thing confuses the heck out of me and i can't get it to work properly! Cause I know you can add your outlines to your script as you write but I only seem to be able to do them separate from each other.
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In all fairness, find and replace is something you can do in pretty much all writing software. It's well worth investing time into learning.
I'm finding Grammarly brilliant too. Helps me a lot. Sadly, the only software it doesn't play well with on my machine in Final Draft, and I want to say I'm surprised by that, but I'm not.
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CJ Walley I was gonna get Grammarly but I noticed almost all of the corrections for me were not good because it didn't take into consideration the tone for scripts. I feel like Grammarly works better for traditional writing but not really for screenplays. For example, one of my action lines was something like "Laura moves slowly up the stairs" and grammarly was mad at me telling me to change it to "Laura moves up the stairs" but I wanted to keep the word slowly because it was a scene that showed she was scared and becoming paralyzed with fear
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Grammarly should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Many times it makes egregious errors. There's nothing that compares to an astute proofreader, editor or a writer's own wide knowledge of language.
In the example, Grammarly rightfully flags adverb use. It's passive writing. It's understood the writer wants to evoke fear, but the slow progress up stairs, out of context, connotes things like physical impairment, sneaking in, uncertainty in a new building.
There are too many possibilities. If a feeling of fear is the goal give it juice and state it: Laura trembles with fear as she takes step after step. Or far better the writer cooks up.
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Tony S. I'm just happy I'm much more of a confident writer that when Grammarly shows me 96 errors I'm able to challenge almost every single one of them rather than just blindly accept all the changes it tells me. If I wasn't a good writer I'd just be like "Oh, man. Let Grammarly fix all these things!" and then my script wouldn't make any sense or be as emotionally impactful. I've even had to get second and third opinions to make sure I was right in my instinct to not blindly accept those changes. Which is crazy because people who need Grammarly are gonna be the ones that won't know any better and will just let it correct all the wrong things.
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I’m sure that’s happens to most writers at one time or another. Don’t feel bad. Good luck in the competition.
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Great experience to share! Its always good to have a proper in-depth proofread of everything before you send it out. Even if its details like the title or your contact details (you don't want to impress someone only for them to be emailing the incorrect address!)
Well, the OP garnering response from here hasn't been edited with the relevant passage about climbing stairs slowly excised. So, good luck, I guess.
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Tony S. huh? I didn't edit anything. My original comment is there and has remained there. I appreciated the feedback and I always welcome it. Weird to imply and falsely claim I edit critique. For someone who claims to be a writer you sure can't seem to read what is right in front of you. Also, a double reason you can't seem to read is that line wasn't even in my script so why would I have been upset by your critique? I said "something like". I was giving an example. That wasn't actually a direct quote from my script so it would be even more odd if you somehow got under my skin for a critique that didn't even apply to me lmao
:)
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Tony S. you really thought I wouldn't notice you edited your comment to say "OP hasn't been edited" when it was "OP has been edited". You're forgetting I'm a professional writer. I read everything carefully, especially first drafts. "Well, the OP garnering response from here hasn't been edited " doesn't even make logical sense. What was your end goal? To try and convince everyone that I misread? You continue to show that all the writing accolades on your account are smoke and mirror. Please, don't ever reply on my posts again.
Huh???
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Tony S. Bro...you literally edited your comment lol so now you're just copying what i said with the "huh" and pretend you didn't edit anything. Just stop replying dude. I'm over this. You accused me of editing my comment and then when I called you out you sent a smile emoji and then I noticed you edited your comment to make it look like I misread
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One error which easily happens. Forgetting to change the paper size when sending a screenplay to another country. I first wrote in my native langauge, and like most of the world we use A4 paper. But in USA the smaller legal format is used. It took a while before I noticed. When someone makes a printout, it is easy to see the error.
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Göran Johansson omg that's funny lol but also sucks!