From screenplay to screenplay, do you find yourself consistently going back to revise one part more than another after your first draft? If so, why? For me, it's the first Act because even though I know my ending, there are often new ideas that spring up along the way that I need to go back and plant the seeds for.
Screenwriting : Which part do you revise the most? by Phil Parker
Which part do you revise the most?
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I normally revise the characters the most, making sure they're 3-dimensional. And then once I do that, the events of the story will naturally fall into place too.
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I tend to do passes through my work.
1 Does it work as an overall story?
2 How does the ACTION read?
3 Character intros. Do they hold up now I know the character better?
4 Does each character have their own sound and feel?
5 Do I stray off theme?
6 Is there any “convenient” things?
7 Does it service the target audience?
8 Does each scene do something different?
9 What can I cut?
10 What can I add?
11 Is it me?
Some of the stuff I do, in no particular order.
But everything I do, I do in isolation. If I am working on one character’s dialogue, I don’t fix a line of action.
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The entire script. Each element gets a separate pass - story, structure, each character gets a separate pass, dialogue, description, etc.
For me the “Middle” is always the most anguish. “Could they (protagonists and antagonists) have navigated their particular path any other way?” There are always a couple of ways (should be in story) in which any character could choose to take a number of differing directions. I know who my main characters are, the cards they been dealt in life (social/psychological/financial) and their goals. It is the middle journey from A to B, where most of my writing all night takes place.
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The beginning, especially the first 10 pages. Once the end is written, I have to go back to make sure the beginning lines up.
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Act 1 for sure, especially the first 10 pages. They're so crucial and the more I write, the more I need to revise them.
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I try to make sure it reads well as a whole - That it's engaging. Even I should want to keep reading every time I go through it again.
I also try to condense the Action wherever possible. The way I write prose is part of 'my voice'...But sometimes my voice can read like a great American novel. So if I can shorten a long sentence down to 3 words, I will.
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When re-writing, I want to make sure the first 30 pages are setup with a plot twist before engaging into the 2nd and 3rd Act. Then will go back and refocus, on the first 10 pages to allow the reader to not put it down onto the floor.