It's *probably* a Dunning-Krueger thing. That's not meant to sound offensive, because basically all of us go through that. You simply don't have enough experience to know what you don't know. Get some really objective feedback on your script (this is easy enough to do for free), let it sit for a bit, and really think about the notes you get. Execute the ones that your gut is telling you are worth executing. Over time, your instincts will get better and soon enough, you'll never love a first draft of yours again!
Well said! I just want to add that sometimes even the smallest, stupidest feedback can trigger a full rewrite, cause it makes you look at things you didn’t see.
Can it be great? I think if you are happy with it right now, turn it in, get your grade, then come back to it in a couple of months. Get some non classmates to read it if you can. It may be perfect now, but you will likely find some ways to make it better - more fulfilling, deeper hitting, smoother logic beats - after a break from it.
There’s a reason why a first draft is called a “FIRST draft.” My sister is an author and my father was an author and playwright up until his death last year. In all the critiques we’ve made of each others’ work, not once did anybody say there were not improvements needed. And none of us ever felt that the suggestions given were not needed and useful.
Get your A, then look at it after a few more years of serious writing. You'll probably find ways to improve it.
Professors have a pretty low bar because so many people don't do the absolutely insane amount of work required to actually be good, and so "learning the material" is "great."
The professional world is entirely different. The people you're competing with are better writers than your professors, work on tighter deadlines than you as a student, and survive on less money because LA is dummy expensive to live in.
I think a lot of people with good discipline can write something on par with a professional writer, but they might only do it after 3 years of work instead of on a 3 month turnaround.
I mean my professor did win the Nicholl award so I can agree with the rest but I wouldn't go so far as to say there are a lot of better writers than him
There's a wide range of things between it being bad and not needing much tweaking.
For it to be really spectacular there's a lot of layers that need to be clicking. Usually more layers than I even realize are there on a first pass.
Also though it kind of just depends on what you mean by a first draft. There's not really an agreed upon definition as far as I know.
I've seen people use it to refer to something they wrote and reworked as they went for 2 years before they finally got to the end. Other people use it when they burn through a vomit draft in a couple of weekends.
The former was better/more polished than the latter but they had also put in a lot more work even if they called it the same thing.
>Is it bad if I don't think my first draft needs much tweaking?
No, I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, especially if you have the right goals. Not every script needs to be "bad" or something you can't stand.
>Am I going to just rest on my laurels and have something good but not great?
Ultimately, "good but not great" is super subjective, anyhow. So I wouldn't stress about it too much.
If your goal is to write for pleasure or as a hobby, there is probably no need to do anything to a script that you're happy with.
If your goal is to someday write professionally / for a living, I also think there's not much need to revise this specific script if you don't want to. Getting good enough to write professionally requires you to practice and fall in love with the cycle of starting, writing, revising and sharing your work, several times a year. But that doesn't mean that every single thing you ever write needs to be extensively revised, just that you need to practice that skill a lot throughout your journey.
I really think you should enjoy this moment and a job well done. Then you gotta put this baby away for a bit, read some of your fellow students... maybe some other movies you really like. Then with fresh, shiny eyes, give your babe another look. You might discover new things -- not mistakes, but another way of doing a scene, or a quicker way out...
Honestly, editing is the fun part. ENJOY!
If you think your script is so good on a first draft, find the original script for John Wick called Scorn. It was direct to video level trash before Keanu rewrote it several times. You'd be astonished at the difference.
Yeah, 99% of people in here don’t realize they get stuck in analysis paralysis and that good writing is only 25% of the battle. Thats not to say skilled writing isn’t a key component, but getting a producer who believes in you, marketing your own work, and pitching are the other 75%. A mediocre script can become a masterpiece with a great pitch that brings the right team around the idea.
Imagine if Harvey Keitel (who put up 1.5 mil to become exec producer) told Quentin Tarantino “Yeah your story is amazing but you need to cut back on the length of your dialogue as it goes way beyond 4 lines in many parts of this Reservoir Dogs you wrote. This is a flaw the industry and I won’t go for.”
I’m gonna take your comment at face value and assume your draft is brilliant.
Here’s the thing about the movie business: whenever a key element gets attached, they’re going to have notes. Could be a director, a star, or a big producer. This will happen even if your screenplay is perfect.
And sometimes, if you’re Tarantino and you control the project outright, you don’t have to listen. But 99.9% of us have to develop a muscle that allows us to alter or even kill our precious creations.
When you’ve experienced that, it may change how you approach the first draft. Suddenly, instead of spending 6 months on a pristine document (as I did on my first paid movie), you may prefer to spend much less time on a rough sketch (as great writers like John Logan and Billy Ray do). That way, you don’t spend weeks crafting the perfect opening sequence, only to see it gutted by the starlet who wants the movie to begin and end with her. My God, the time I wasted.
It's not that you're supposed to believe your first draft is bad. It's more about giving yourself permission to start rough so it frees you up to be productive and try things out, and you don't get trapped in the slow drudge of perfectionism.
It is unlikely, however, that you're that one guy who gets everything right on the first draft.
Probably still riding on a high of the accomplishment of finishing the script. I've been euphoric myself at times, when that's happened. Only to be hit like a truck by reality a little later, when I pick it up agan and then question myself how I could ever write that garbage.
So. My suggestion is to leave it alone for awhile, do something else, give it time to distance it from yourself, it helps to see it more objectively when you pick it up again.
Feel whatever you want, but if the feedback from your teacher and classmates doesn't come back as positive as you expected, I hope you'll accept it with humility and learn from it.
You can also post your first 10 pages here and we'll tell you if it's epic or not.
It probably does. Go over it slowly, read it through, you may find some issues. Read it out loud and everything.
I fall into that pit trap as well, I just move on, write more, and then I’ll come back to it. I hate rewrites with every bone in my body (especially features, they take SO long!!!) but I will do it if I must. Le sigh.
Just step away for a while and come back to it and a lot of new things good and bad will pop up all over the place.
I felt the same way when I wrote my 1st one. I was like OK just need to fix grammatical and formatting issues. 3 weeks later, I came back and spotted weak character motivations and little to no character arcs.
Found out that I fell too in love with my characters values and gave him next to no flaws, lol.
But who knows…maybe, just maybe, you’re the exception. It’s happened before.
Often first drafts get to the heart of the story but are flawed, second drafts fix the flaws but lose some of the heart, third drafts are where it all comes together (if you get lucky).
It’s not bad but I guarantee you it will need tweaking down the line one way or another, but definitely be proud and if you’re happy let it gestate for a while before going back to it with fresh eyes (and show it to more people)
Well, it's not bad, but it's not exactly good either. erm, have you shown it to others, what do they think of it, sometimes we can be so involved, in our stories, that we miss obvious issues. So getting an outside perspective is advised, and taking a step back, reevaluating the whole script and story, the theme and so on. if you still believe it's perfect then go to the next step
As a just in case, I would stash the script away for a couple months. Then reread it and see how you feel. It helps when your eyes are seeing it fresh again.
Also follow u/Nathan_Graham_Davis advice. If you have the notes, you take a short break from the story, then come back to it and see how you’d address each note.
One last thing, if you’re worried about making it worse, hold on to this script in a copy, and then do all the changing. You can then hear from other people, whether it’s better or worse after a decent amount of time has passed. That’s my take on it at least.
If it’s the story you want to tell, and it’s working in all the ways that make it feel like a fun, easy read… then maybe it’s done. Sometimes people get stuck in infinite re-writes and it’s not making it better at all. Sometimes it does.
All of the advice here is well reasoned and generally applicable, but let me offer a counter-example just for balance:
The first draft of the first script I ever wrote was optioned, a-lister attached, and I was rep'd within 2 weeks of sharing it with a local friend.\* I was asked to do 2 major rewrites and countless minor changes before the project's eventual (slow, painful) death. Each subsequent draft was worse than the first.
Some writers - especially those who pre-write - come out the gate with strong first drafts. It happens. Are they perfect? Of course not, nothing is. Do you need to learn how to incorporate feedback? Most certainly. But you also need to learn how to trust yourself.
All that said, get your script into the hands of some trusted readers ASAP. Read their notes once as soon as you get them. Then stick them in a drawer for as long as deadlines allow. Let all that feedback subconsciously stew for a few days, or even a few weeks. This time allows you to both get over the *"fuck you what do you know"* period, and also allows you the time to synthesize it into your own. Then go back and re-read the notes, deciding what feedback to incorporate and how. Do not lose sight of what originally made you write it in the first place, that's your North Star.
\* I've had close to zero success since, so take this for what it's worth!
To be honest, I didn't do *any* revisions on my drafts for ages. I've forgotten why. But when I did, it was so, so liberating. If nothing else, you could write something down with zero inhibitions about getting it right the first time, and, in fact, the more I've ended up writing, the more I've ended up revising and editing.
For instance, for the 55-page play I wrote over the summer of last year, I'd say about one in every four pages has some form of revision on it - some pages and sequences have been rewritten entirely, because the first draft was, upon re-reading, a bit of an angsty mess. So the second draft took out a good deal of it, whilst still keeping the scaffolding - the beat sheet - identical, because I knew, if nothing else, it had a solid foundation and a tightly-bound plot. The interactions left a lot to be desired, however.
But if it's your first *ever* script? Yeah, that needs work. My first ever script was rubbish, and given the chance would give it a total rewrite and proper formatting. The play I was talking about was my eleventh script (including two unnecessary total rewrites), so by that time I'd started to just, marginally get the hang of it.
Of course, confidence is a great thing, and it serves *to* be confident, it can get you a long, long way and put eyes on your work that you wouldn't have dreamed about, but equally, know when your work needs work. Two famous writers - Noel Coward and Russell T Davies - don't shy away from extensive rewriting if the project calls for it. So don't be afraid of it. Embrace it.
The only times I’m very happy with a first draft is after intense outlining and pre-writing — but when I do those steps, my rewrites after the first one are usually minor adjustments to scenes rather than full adjustments to structure.
maybe have 5-10 other people look it over. if one person makes a critique sure whatever maybe it’s personal preference. but if you keep hearing the same things rework it and see what you think!
Definitely leave it for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes and a fresh mindset, that’s what I do! You might still love it and if you do then that’s great but I often rethink things on my re-read! Also a student here, good luck with it all! 🙌
Ok the best book for that is probably the screenwriter’s bible by Dave Trottier. It has checkpoints for pre writing, revising and polishing! It has helped me a lot! (Not an ad)
You've written exactly on screenplay, so count on it being not just imperfect but extremely so. If you make up your mind now that it doesn't need work you're going to feel like a ton of bricks hit you when you start getting feedback on it.
After watching that atrocious donut thing you're spam posting, I wouldn't turn your nose up at being a student. Seems like having someone to teach you how to make good content might be worth it for you
Hahaha. Go deeper.
You might find my film that played TriBeCa. It’s a short.
The donut thing ain’t great. But share you script will ya?
You think I have problem? Your a student who thinks that got it right first time. Let’s see shall we.
I’m happy to be wrong.
Also : definitely not turning my nose up at you being a student but it’s kinda arrogant what you suggest
can't even use the right "you're." congrats on tribeca though. must've really done a lot for your career if you're still arguing with lowly students on the internet
It's *probably* a Dunning-Krueger thing. That's not meant to sound offensive, because basically all of us go through that. You simply don't have enough experience to know what you don't know. Get some really objective feedback on your script (this is easy enough to do for free), let it sit for a bit, and really think about the notes you get. Execute the ones that your gut is telling you are worth executing. Over time, your instincts will get better and soon enough, you'll never love a first draft of yours again!
This needs to be pinned. Well said.
Well said! I just want to add that sometimes even the smallest, stupidest feedback can trigger a full rewrite, cause it makes you look at things you didn’t see.
This is obnoxiously true.
Good advice. Thanks
Can it be great? I think if you are happy with it right now, turn it in, get your grade, then come back to it in a couple of months. Get some non classmates to read it if you can. It may be perfect now, but you will likely find some ways to make it better - more fulfilling, deeper hitting, smoother logic beats - after a break from it.
There’s a reason why a first draft is called a “FIRST draft.” My sister is an author and my father was an author and playwright up until his death last year. In all the critiques we’ve made of each others’ work, not once did anybody say there were not improvements needed. And none of us ever felt that the suggestions given were not needed and useful.
Get your A, then look at it after a few more years of serious writing. You'll probably find ways to improve it. Professors have a pretty low bar because so many people don't do the absolutely insane amount of work required to actually be good, and so "learning the material" is "great." The professional world is entirely different. The people you're competing with are better writers than your professors, work on tighter deadlines than you as a student, and survive on less money because LA is dummy expensive to live in. I think a lot of people with good discipline can write something on par with a professional writer, but they might only do it after 3 years of work instead of on a 3 month turnaround.
I mean my professor did win the Nicholl award so I can agree with the rest but I wouldn't go so far as to say there are a lot of better writers than him
Is he selling or making anything? Awards mean absolutely nothing.
There's a wide range of things between it being bad and not needing much tweaking. For it to be really spectacular there's a lot of layers that need to be clicking. Usually more layers than I even realize are there on a first pass. Also though it kind of just depends on what you mean by a first draft. There's not really an agreed upon definition as far as I know. I've seen people use it to refer to something they wrote and reworked as they went for 2 years before they finally got to the end. Other people use it when they burn through a vomit draft in a couple of weekends. The former was better/more polished than the latter but they had also put in a lot more work even if they called it the same thing.
Good advice. Thanks
Let it rest for a couple of weeks, even a month or two. Then re-read it.
I came here to say this.
>Is it bad if I don't think my first draft needs much tweaking? No, I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, especially if you have the right goals. Not every script needs to be "bad" or something you can't stand. >Am I going to just rest on my laurels and have something good but not great? Ultimately, "good but not great" is super subjective, anyhow. So I wouldn't stress about it too much. If your goal is to write for pleasure or as a hobby, there is probably no need to do anything to a script that you're happy with. If your goal is to someday write professionally / for a living, I also think there's not much need to revise this specific script if you don't want to. Getting good enough to write professionally requires you to practice and fall in love with the cycle of starting, writing, revising and sharing your work, several times a year. But that doesn't mean that every single thing you ever write needs to be extensively revised, just that you need to practice that skill a lot throughout your journey.
Good advice. thanks
I really think you should enjoy this moment and a job well done. Then you gotta put this baby away for a bit, read some of your fellow students... maybe some other movies you really like. Then with fresh, shiny eyes, give your babe another look. You might discover new things -- not mistakes, but another way of doing a scene, or a quicker way out... Honestly, editing is the fun part. ENJOY!
Thanks!
I would go one step further and start a new project. Doing that will let completely step away from the first project.
If you think your script is so good on a first draft, find the original script for John Wick called Scorn. It was direct to video level trash before Keanu rewrote it several times. You'd be astonished at the difference.
I'm gonna go look that up right now, thanks!
Congratulations. There is nothing wrong with being confident in your work.
Yeah, 99% of people in here don’t realize they get stuck in analysis paralysis and that good writing is only 25% of the battle. Thats not to say skilled writing isn’t a key component, but getting a producer who believes in you, marketing your own work, and pitching are the other 75%. A mediocre script can become a masterpiece with a great pitch that brings the right team around the idea.
Imagine if Harvey Keitel (who put up 1.5 mil to become exec producer) told Quentin Tarantino “Yeah your story is amazing but you need to cut back on the length of your dialogue as it goes way beyond 4 lines in many parts of this Reservoir Dogs you wrote. This is a flaw the industry and I won’t go for.”
I’m gonna take your comment at face value and assume your draft is brilliant. Here’s the thing about the movie business: whenever a key element gets attached, they’re going to have notes. Could be a director, a star, or a big producer. This will happen even if your screenplay is perfect. And sometimes, if you’re Tarantino and you control the project outright, you don’t have to listen. But 99.9% of us have to develop a muscle that allows us to alter or even kill our precious creations. When you’ve experienced that, it may change how you approach the first draft. Suddenly, instead of spending 6 months on a pristine document (as I did on my first paid movie), you may prefer to spend much less time on a rough sketch (as great writers like John Logan and Billy Ray do). That way, you don’t spend weeks crafting the perfect opening sequence, only to see it gutted by the starlet who wants the movie to begin and end with her. My God, the time I wasted.
Is it bad? No. Are you wrong? Very much yes.
It's not that you're supposed to believe your first draft is bad. It's more about giving yourself permission to start rough so it frees you up to be productive and try things out, and you don't get trapped in the slow drudge of perfectionism. It is unlikely, however, that you're that one guy who gets everything right on the first draft.
Probably still riding on a high of the accomplishment of finishing the script. I've been euphoric myself at times, when that's happened. Only to be hit like a truck by reality a little later, when I pick it up agan and then question myself how I could ever write that garbage. So. My suggestion is to leave it alone for awhile, do something else, give it time to distance it from yourself, it helps to see it more objectively when you pick it up again.
Feel whatever you want, but if the feedback from your teacher and classmates doesn't come back as positive as you expected, I hope you'll accept it with humility and learn from it. You can also post your first 10 pages here and we'll tell you if it's epic or not.
Why delete the post? Did someone get their feelings slapped with the truth? Lol
give it a few days. re-read it a few days later and you’ll find plenty you want to tweak. nothing is perfect and we can all improve a little!
Hard to say, but yeah. Probably. Lol.
Like other commenters have said, take a break from it and maybe have it workshopped with a trusted fellow writer
It helps if you want your script to be peer-reviewed to make it better.
It probably does. Go over it slowly, read it through, you may find some issues. Read it out loud and everything. I fall into that pit trap as well, I just move on, write more, and then I’ll come back to it. I hate rewrites with every bone in my body (especially features, they take SO long!!!) but I will do it if I must. Le sigh.
Just step away for a while and come back to it and a lot of new things good and bad will pop up all over the place. I felt the same way when I wrote my 1st one. I was like OK just need to fix grammatical and formatting issues. 3 weeks later, I came back and spotted weak character motivations and little to no character arcs. Found out that I fell too in love with my characters values and gave him next to no flaws, lol. But who knows…maybe, just maybe, you’re the exception. It’s happened before.
Often first drafts get to the heart of the story but are flawed, second drafts fix the flaws but lose some of the heart, third drafts are where it all comes together (if you get lucky).
Some writers, including Queer as Folk/It’s a Sin/Doctor Who’s RTD as well as Kurt Vonnegut essentially only ever wrote first drafts
Well, there’s an easy way to get people to want to read your script
It’s not bad but I guarantee you it will need tweaking down the line one way or another, but definitely be proud and if you’re happy let it gestate for a while before going back to it with fresh eyes (and show it to more people)
That's great! Now make it.
Well, it's not bad, but it's not exactly good either. erm, have you shown it to others, what do they think of it, sometimes we can be so involved, in our stories, that we miss obvious issues. So getting an outside perspective is advised, and taking a step back, reevaluating the whole script and story, the theme and so on. if you still believe it's perfect then go to the next step
Everything else already said except “good on you”. A first draft of your first feature is massive. Well done.
As a just in case, I would stash the script away for a couple months. Then reread it and see how you feel. It helps when your eyes are seeing it fresh again. Also follow u/Nathan_Graham_Davis advice. If you have the notes, you take a short break from the story, then come back to it and see how you’d address each note. One last thing, if you’re worried about making it worse, hold on to this script in a copy, and then do all the changing. You can then hear from other people, whether it’s better or worse after a decent amount of time has passed. That’s my take on it at least.
If it’s the story you want to tell, and it’s working in all the ways that make it feel like a fun, easy read… then maybe it’s done. Sometimes people get stuck in infinite re-writes and it’s not making it better at all. Sometimes it does.
If you continue screenwriting come back to it in five years. You'll be able to clearly see the problems that you don't know enough to see now.
All of the advice here is well reasoned and generally applicable, but let me offer a counter-example just for balance: The first draft of the first script I ever wrote was optioned, a-lister attached, and I was rep'd within 2 weeks of sharing it with a local friend.\* I was asked to do 2 major rewrites and countless minor changes before the project's eventual (slow, painful) death. Each subsequent draft was worse than the first. Some writers - especially those who pre-write - come out the gate with strong first drafts. It happens. Are they perfect? Of course not, nothing is. Do you need to learn how to incorporate feedback? Most certainly. But you also need to learn how to trust yourself. All that said, get your script into the hands of some trusted readers ASAP. Read their notes once as soon as you get them. Then stick them in a drawer for as long as deadlines allow. Let all that feedback subconsciously stew for a few days, or even a few weeks. This time allows you to both get over the *"fuck you what do you know"* period, and also allows you the time to synthesize it into your own. Then go back and re-read the notes, deciding what feedback to incorporate and how. Do not lose sight of what originally made you write it in the first place, that's your North Star. \* I've had close to zero success since, so take this for what it's worth!
Don't look at it for like a few weeks, and re-read it after, and then decide.
To be honest, I didn't do *any* revisions on my drafts for ages. I've forgotten why. But when I did, it was so, so liberating. If nothing else, you could write something down with zero inhibitions about getting it right the first time, and, in fact, the more I've ended up writing, the more I've ended up revising and editing. For instance, for the 55-page play I wrote over the summer of last year, I'd say about one in every four pages has some form of revision on it - some pages and sequences have been rewritten entirely, because the first draft was, upon re-reading, a bit of an angsty mess. So the second draft took out a good deal of it, whilst still keeping the scaffolding - the beat sheet - identical, because I knew, if nothing else, it had a solid foundation and a tightly-bound plot. The interactions left a lot to be desired, however. But if it's your first *ever* script? Yeah, that needs work. My first ever script was rubbish, and given the chance would give it a total rewrite and proper formatting. The play I was talking about was my eleventh script (including two unnecessary total rewrites), so by that time I'd started to just, marginally get the hang of it. Of course, confidence is a great thing, and it serves *to* be confident, it can get you a long, long way and put eyes on your work that you wouldn't have dreamed about, but equally, know when your work needs work. Two famous writers - Noel Coward and Russell T Davies - don't shy away from extensive rewriting if the project calls for it. So don't be afraid of it. Embrace it.
The only times I’m very happy with a first draft is after intense outlining and pre-writing — but when I do those steps, my rewrites after the first one are usually minor adjustments to scenes rather than full adjustments to structure.
maybe have 5-10 other people look it over. if one person makes a critique sure whatever maybe it’s personal preference. but if you keep hearing the same things rework it and see what you think!
Definitely leave it for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes and a fresh mindset, that’s what I do! You might still love it and if you do then that’s great but I often rethink things on my re-read! Also a student here, good luck with it all! 🙌
IMO, yes. "There are no good writers, only good re-writers" is 100% accurate, IMO.
Ok the best book for that is probably the screenwriter’s bible by Dave Trottier. It has checkpoints for pre writing, revising and polishing! It has helped me a lot! (Not an ad)
You've written exactly on screenplay, so count on it being not just imperfect but extremely so. If you make up your mind now that it doesn't need work you're going to feel like a ton of bricks hit you when you start getting feedback on it.
The secrets in your first line ‘Imma screenwriting student ‘ lol.
After watching that atrocious donut thing you're spam posting, I wouldn't turn your nose up at being a student. Seems like having someone to teach you how to make good content might be worth it for you
Hahaha. Go deeper. You might find my film that played TriBeCa. It’s a short. The donut thing ain’t great. But share you script will ya? You think I have problem? Your a student who thinks that got it right first time. Let’s see shall we. I’m happy to be wrong. Also : definitely not turning my nose up at you being a student but it’s kinda arrogant what you suggest
can't even use the right "you're." congrats on tribeca though. must've really done a lot for your career if you're still arguing with lowly students on the internet