Easy screenplay and teleplay writing tips

There's a lot of advice for screenwriting out there that isn't actually that helpful. But there are a few tips I've received that are actually great advice and relatively easy to implement.

Nothing should ever be easy for your characters

Unfortunately for your characters, stories are built on conflict. So whether they're trying to accomplish their dreams or trying to drive to the store, nothing should ever be easy. Make your characters suffer. Keeping this fact in the back of your mind while writing will help you naturally work in both humor, plot and character development.

Never tell your audience the same thing twice

You'll notice if you look for it, that all the pros follow this rule. If we see a character die, you never have a scene where another character tells someone else this information. Often you get the walk in, take off the hat, eye contact and boom, cut. Or, the aftermath, and the audience fills in the rest. They're not stupid -- challenge them to pay attention and they will. Treat them like idiots and they won't much like your story. 

Have your characters speak in distinctive ways

Okay, okay, that's hard to do -- but I have some cheats! Formulate a list of speaking patterns. Things you do, things your friends and family do. Words they overuse. Maybe they ramble a lot. Maybe they're, like, teenagers, or whatever.

Think about great characters on great shows and their distinct ways of speaking. Using Breaking Bad as a reference as always, there's Jesse (yo, he, like, swears a lot, bitch), Saul (think colorful metaphors), Hank (off-color jokes), and Walt (super dramatic and preachy about everything -- lots of hyperbole). Characters having distinctive dialogue leads to you having a quotable show. Ideally, a different writer would write dialogue for each character to have inherent differences, but unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. So it's your job to keep the speaking habits of all your characters straight. Which will come pretty naturally because writers are just insecure actors, right?

Pay attention to the flow of action within each act

The most important action and plot points should come at the end of an act. Keep long stretches of dialogue, exposition, etc at the beginning of an act. Ideally, at the beginning of act one. Your scenes in the first act might be longer than scenes toward the end.

An easy way to rearrange scenes within each act is to put them on note cards and just mess around with them. There's always a better way things can be organized.

Give your hero a speech or two

Typically it's good to avoid long paragraphs of dialogue, but there's one exception and that's speeches. 

Every actor wants a speech, and every good character deserves one. Again referring to Breaking Bad, Walt's got dozens of speeches, everything from the "I Am The One Who Knocks" speech to an audience of one to the "People Move On" speech in front of a few thousand. Not to mention Mike's "No More Half Measures" speech and Jesse's "Problem Dog" speech. These speeches are all parts that you want to rewatch that showcase the actor's talent and the character's distinct speaking patterns.

It's worth noting that a speech only works if the character does a have a distinct way of speaking.

Action paragraphs should be just that -- action

This is stylistic but also really important. Write action in an active voice. It's not description. Find ways to squeeze in description using action if necessary.

Don't be afraid of a little rewrite

Or a big one. There's not a single line of dialogue or action from my first draft that's been carried over to the current draft of my pilot script. And I'm still re-working it constantly. If you've got the time for an overhaul, use it. Make a list of what you want to change. Even if it's not very specific (my lists usually start off as: make it better, make it less bad, make it less boring...) you can find specific ways to accomplish those things once you know what you want to you.

Get screenwriting software 

I have Final Draft. I don't mess around. Go big or go home.


Writing is really, really hard. Screenwriting is no exception. But these little tips can really help you get off on the right foot. And the number one tip for anyone who wants to write is, as always: write. I know it's not that easy, but you've got to start somewhere.