Writers Boot Camp

12 Common First Draft Problems: Empowering Our Professional Members

While we help writers get through first drafts at a highly accelerated pace, the achievement of completing your first draft is the equivalent of reaching the end of the beginning of the script development process. Writers Boot Camp identifies at least 10 specific drafts on your script prior to its submission to industry friends and contacts.

That's what we refer to as a full development process for television, feature and digital writers and why we offer Professional Membership, replete with 48 sessions of intensive coursework, formal script deadlines every six months and ongoing services as an alumnus, including free script evaluation.

The completion of a first draft is an important start, a platform for the real work to begin. But like scaffolding during construction, the first draft pages will eventually disappear with further stages of project completion.

Writers, without an arsenal of tools to expedite the writing process, can spend hundreds of hours over many years to achieve the equivalent of a first draft, which through Writers Boot Camp's training and tools would take only a couple of months.

By definition, first drafts are just a start. They lack the explicit "audience experience" and cultivated seamlessness expected in a viable script. Yet too often, motivated by the drive for approval and the desire for feedback, a writer will send out a script too soon.

New writers, with an outsider's view of professional craft, tend to show and submit material prematurely, putting their most sympathetic industry relationships at risk. The most earnest executive or producer will have a hard time going back to the well to give a second or third attentive read.

Your commitment and passion for a project can be undermined by the litany of notes, let alone an unenthused response, or even no response at all. Unless an idea is so clearly compelling and distinctive--a rare feat in our very competitive, idea-based business--a first draft, whether by a new or experienced writer, is usually far from a fully expressed vision or well articulated blueprint.

Imagine the burden on the typical week of an executive by reading requests from the long list of writers and friends vying for attention. Our writers learn to pre-empt this displacement of responsibility onto the reader, focusing instead on work ethic, tools for collaboration and a communication style that illustrates their awareness and development status of their own script.

Most rewrites, done conventionally and linearly, and focusing mostly on plot, are not true rewrites and tend to simply swirl words around. An early rewrite is not about editing but will ideally bring 30-50% new material--new scenes, character interactions, encounters, events and relationship phases--to supersede the first draft pages.

Here is a list of common first draft problems that apply to both feature film and television writing. Knowing these issues will help you accept where you are along the creative timeline and to manage your own expectations, as well as help you understand the timing of submitting to a reader or a particular company.

1. Whether feature, TV spec or TV pilot script, the 1^st Act and Set-Up are too long and the early events, created from the start instead of reverse engineered from the end, take too long to unfold. Also, the first half and most of the middle of the script can be cut and compressed to make room for more specific scene material.

2. The Main Character is not active, often due to the writer unintentionally internalizing the character's POV and also due to an unclear or undefined Building Block Misbehavior.

3. The Dynamic Character and Dynamic Relationship lacks enough clear stages of progression throughout the middle of the story or story line.

4. The events along the Adventure are episodic, meaning that they don't resonate with greater and expanding interpersonal and thematic consequences.

5. The Adventure lacks enough connected events that represent the organic, incremental stages of the Main Character's experience.

6. The Complication after the Mid-Point is not compelling yet in that its contribution to the intensification of the story or story line is not fully articulated.

7. The Ultimate Opponent is not well developed and clearly motivated in the draft.

8. The Low Point is not strong in that its levels are not mined for direct conflict, physical and emotional jeopardy, emotional expression, Opponent presence, reversion to Misbehavior and Dynamic Estrangement.

9. The Battle Segment, including the Battle Scene, is missing the convergence of characters and payoffs based on what and who have been introduced throughout the Adventure.

10. The Genre is soft, meaning that the expected entertainment is not coming through in terms of emotion and the conventions of the kind of story depicted in the script.

11. The Project Conceits are not fully developed; there aren't enough Setpieces (moments of interaction, lines of scene direction and dialogue) that carry the DNA of what's uniquely entertaining about the project.

12. The Scene Work hitches in that there are a myriad of craft issues that make the script a difficult read. Common Scene Work problems include rambling dialogue, overly linear dialogue, dialogue that is too polite, overly expositional dialogue, dialogue that lacks character separation, dense action, choreography that disrupts the dialogue flow, mundane or stiff writing, lack of inspired Scene Conduct--just to name a handful.

Again, the above problems are very, very common. If you have completed a first draft - even as a Basic Training alumnus - it's normal to have many of these issues.

The screenwriting and television career is subject to profound challenges, including the occasionally overwhelming epiphanies a writer will eventually face regarding the amount of work involved with creating just a single script into a viable, professional sample.

Writers Boot Camp's Professional Membership has evolved as a natural reflection of the learning curve and project development cycle. Our current Membership Drive offers an opportunity for writers in L.A., NYC and around the world to start NOW, and still move past the first draft by the end of the year.

If the above material is helpful to you, imagine what exposure to the tools and benchmarks of empowered rewriting will do for your material and professional potential.

For more information on how we may be able to help elevate your process and limit the time you spend on early drafts, call 800/800-1733 today.