| [BACK]
Completion is everything. Whether it's your first draft or your fifth. To me getting to the end of your first draft is the most important because then you have a chance to see what you've written. As my first writing teacher once said, "Then you can see what you've written."
Unfortunatley, many screenwriters, both new and not so new, never get to that point. They give up at various stages along the way only to start another script with the hope of completing it. Sometimes they do, but more often they don't. So they give up on that one as well.
I'm not say that you shouldn't give up on a script. Sometimes it just doesn't work out. Sometimes it's one of those ideas that sounded good or felt right at the time, but then later on it (and your enthusiasm for it) fizzles out.
But be careful about doing that every time. If you start and stop on two ideas, make a promise to yourself to finish the third. Nobody will buy a half-completed screenplay. Nobody may buy your first draft of a completed script, but at least it's done and you can start revising and rewriting and making it better and shaping it into something that an agent might want to handle or a producer might want to option.
The next best thing to writing the words The End on a screenplay is writing your name as you endorse a big check from a studio. |
