Film Courage: Where does the second draft begin?
Writer/Instructor and Script Consultant Shannan E. Johnson (The Professional Pen): Your second draft
should begin when your first draft ends and you go off and do something else go away stop looking
at it take your mind off of it which I know is very very hard but take your mind off of it go
do something else for at least a week give your brain an opportunity to rest and then come back
re-read it first before you start writing because you should be giving your own notes you might not
know how to give notes like a script consultant or know how to give notes like an executive but
something in you is telling you that something's not working and so you need to track what those
things are so read your script and then just kind of start making notes for yourself about okay this
isn't clear here or this gets a little confusing here etcetera so that when you're going back for
your revision you can address those things if you don't know how to do that you're probably going
to go back because you need to do a proofreading pass you need to do a formatting pass you might
know that you want to look at the dialogue again and make sure that it's not as on the nose or in
some places not too long and things like that so not everyone goes into their second draft with
the same intention if you've been doing this long enough then you already know however many drafts
you're going to have so the second draft is going to come but if you're new with this once you've
finished and you really don't know what should happen next that's the time when you need to get
another set of eyes on it that's the time when you want to come to a scripts consultant to say
hey here it is can you tell me which direction I need to go in here do I need to rewrite from the
beginning do I need to just fix a few things here and there and then now you get back into
that second draft process of addressing those notes what do a lot of writers get wrong about
starting that second draft they don't give it enough space yeah I would say not giving it
enough space because you haven't given your mind an opportunity to see it differently that's what's
so great about having a second pair of eyes on something because this person is not bringing
anything into it not the experience of it not that one scene that you really wanted to keep but
you had to lose that person doesn't know anything and you'd be surprised at how much you can forget
in a week so if you give yourself an opportunity to come back and re-read then you'll kind of see
it differently and a little bit more objectively even though it's yours so I think giving that
space is necessary and then having that second second set of eyes if you need it even if that's
someone else that maybe it's a script consultant because at least you'll get clear and actionable
notes but even if it's just someone that you trust somebody who can read it and just go ah this is
how I felt or yeah it's it's looking good whatever that is getting feedback and again that's a hard
thing none of us want to be critiqued none of us want to be told that it's terrible everybody wants
to be told it's just perfect and this is great but that's just not going to be true even if it's a
great story that's probably going to be something that you can tighten up so having someone again
going back to that brain trust you might not be at the point where you have executives as your brain
trust but there's somebody or some people who you can send your screenplay to who can be honest
with you about where to start because I think by now most writers know that writing is rewriting
but that doesn't mean they know that there's a difference between rewriting and revising or where
they should even start with their rewrite or with their revision because everything should not be a
page one rewrite you need to know what you're going into your draft to do you have to have
a plan for it it might not be as big of a plan as outlining like we talk when you're going to
do your first draft but there should be a plan it shouldn't just be oh I'm just gonna start writing
from the top again or I'm just going to start revising from the top again you may be revising
something that doesn't need to be revised so being able to get another pair of eyes on it and making
sure you're spending time away from it while you're getting other pairs of eyes on it leave it
alone do not keep writing while other people are reading you could be causing problems that they
don't get to give you any any feedback on because they don't see them because you're over here still
writing while they're doing this or you could be removing something that works really well what I
mean let it go step away from it and give your or give either yourself time to look at it from
a different perspective or give the other person time to send it back to you with the feedback so
that you can kind of know where to start how does a writer know what is wrong with their first draft
yeah that's a good question I think if you haven't been doing this very long you might not know
which is why you need your brain trust or you need a script consultant or someone who can
come in and kind of look at it to guide you if you've been learning screenplay structure
you might be able to say feel like something's supposed to happen here and I just don't know
what it is and now again you've got to reach out to somebody who can help you figure out what that
thing is that you're missing hopefully most people who are choosing to write have a natural sense
of Storytelling if you have a natural sense of Storytelling something is doing this to you to go
this something here you might not be able to put your hand on it because you're a newer writer and
that's why you want somebody else to take a look at it if you've been doing this often enough then
you already know so for example I was working on this screenplay and I was doing all of my pre-work
like my character building and understanding their goals etcetera before I get to my outline etcetera
I never continued mostly because I got busy but because I under already understood that there
was a problem and I hadn't fixed it yet and the problem was she was going to be unlikable
I wanted her to not be what we view women to be I didn't want her to be happy she's been through
some stuff she's not happy but even in her not being happy people have to want to root for her so
she's got to be likable in some way and I hadn't at that time figured out how to make her likable
so I didn't bother to start reading the screen writing the screenplay now I'm not saying that's
what everybody else should do you can go ahead and write it and then go back in and try to make her
likable but because I already understood it to be a problem because I know that you have to like or
relate and for her I felt like she wasn't going to be likable or relatable because I was making
her in a way that people feel women don't show up as so for an example she has a great husband great
but for her he's annoying and so many women will say you've got a good man then you should be X Y
and Z but for her because of her trauma which has nothing to do with him she cannot accept him in
that way that's not something that's in quotations relatable because we don't talk about that often
enough might be a lot of women who are going through it but we don't necessarily talk about
it and so since we don't talk about it now we just see a woman who's being mean to a very very nice
man are we going to want to root for her what I mean maybe maybe not so because that was something
I already understood I knew not to go forward and maybe one day I'll have time and I can go back
and I can figure out how to make her likable with other things but I think if you really understand
all of the little elements along the way and you've done the pre-work along the way then you'll
start to know I didn't quite figure this this part out like I know that this is conflict but I'm
not really sure if it's working I know I've got a climax but I'm not really sure if it's big enough
or if it's Landing what I mean you'll kind of feel those things even if you don't have the the
vocabulary or the words to kind of talk about it and express it which is why again get that brain
trust get that writer's group get your script consoles and get somebody else who can do that
part for you so that you can at least open the door or for understanding for the next time around
how focused on page count should new writers be for the second draft yeah so I think it depends
on what if it's a feature page count matters for genre horror stories are usually not very long
they're usually going to be in the 80 90 less than 100 kind of range if you're doing a drama
it's probably going to be around 120 Pages or so if you're doing a biopic it might be 130 pages
because you're talking about in a person's entire life so I think it's not about writing to the page
count but it is about understanding the genre in which you're writing because no one's watching
a three-hour romantic comedy what I mean so it's like for you to understand the genre that you're
writing and kind of live within that space because again people want to show up to something that
they understand like if I'm going to a Marvel film if I'm going to Avatar I might understand that I'm
going to be in here for a long time but if I think that I'm just going to go watch guess who's coming
to dinner then I'm not trying to be in here for for three hours to do that so understanding the
rules of your of your genre is going to help with page count when it comes to television on
the other hand it's about where you're submitting where you're submitting to so for the most part if
you're writing a TV script and you're a new writer you're nine times out of ten not pitching it
anywhere because you don't have that relationship yet that we talked about you don't have that agent
that manager that lawyer or whoever that's going to connect you to the executive to be able to
pitch it in the first place so nine times out of ten it's a writing sample whether you want it to
be that or not that's what it is nine times out of ten it's not going to be picked up to be a pilot
today maybe later on in life after you've gotten a little bit more established maybe you might be
the one percent that did get picked up like pose did before the most part it's it's probably just
going to be a writing sample that's a stepping stone to get you to where you want to be if
you're now submitting it to fellowships or you're submitting it to screenplay competitions most of
the time they will give you a page count therefore you need to be writing towards it because if not
you're going to be disqualified so if it said 60 page and you send in 61 you're out so you need
to be writing to 60 if you get to the point where you are being able to submit to studios networks
etcetera then going back to that homework about that brand how many screenplays have you read from
that network how many how often have you watched the episode and kind of paid attention to the time
because if it's on a streamer one episode could be 30 minutes the next one's 45 minutes the next
one's blah blah so maybe it doesn't matter how long your screenplay is but if you're watching
HBO it might be clockwork 59 minutes which means you're probably not going to have more than 65
pages so you want to stay in that so it just depends on what you're going to do with it now
with that being said I'm not necessarily saying that second drafts are about page count because
if you have other problems page count is the least of your worries I always tell people put it all
on the page you can always trim it later always so you might not start trimming until you get to
draft five or draft 10 depending upon how long it's taking you to get what you need but if
you are in a place where you understand what your problems are and you're able to fix those problems
then I would say second draft is about fixing problems and you want to fix problems until
you get those problems fixed and then you want to worry about page count because if you need to trim
then you're going to have to everything affects everything so if you need to trim you taking one
piece out of a conversation might change how your character reacts to the other person because again
if the character was saying curse word and now suddenly that curse word is not in there
and let's say it's back to the daughter cursing the mom if the daughter curses the mom the mom's
going to respond a particular way if somehow some way due to page count you cut out that part mom's
not responding that same way and now there's a trickle trickle-down effect so trimming can
can change the context of of what your screenplay is so you will definitely need
a draft that is about trimming but it might not be be your second draft so first draft is
creating problems second draft is fixing them fixing them third draft is problems are solved
or not always oh yeah not always oh okay not always but hopefully hopefully but not always.