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Wednesday, August 4, 2010

A brief rant: my pet peeve about screenwriters

One of my (unpaid) jobs is Director of the GIAA Festival of Short Films and Videos (www.giaafilmfest.com). We have a screenplay competition, and I read all of the submitted screenplays before passing them on to other judges.

I'll preface this by saying that I have many many (many!) flaws as a screenwriter. But my pet peeve when reading scripts is writers who violate one of the cardinal rules:
If an actor can't act it, it shouldn't be in a screenplay.

Example:
Don't write: Jane thinks about her ex-boyfriend.
Do write: Jane looks at a photo of her ex-boyfriend.

I'm done now.

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