How to Read and Write a Screenplay?

The ability to write a highly polished and professional script doesn’t come easy to anybody. It takes years, decades in fact, to master the craft. Indeed, mastery of that craft requires the mastery of a number of different skills.

Screenwriting is not one single, defined skill; it is a set of skills that combine to create the wherewithal to produce the scripts that are transformed into the new films or blockbusters. Not everybody is lucky enough to have that success, but every now and again, a script is crafted with all the right tools and it impresses all the right people.

The problem is that identifying a good script is such a subjective thing, so a screenwriter can never hope to impress everybody. Much the same as a CV when you’re applying for a job, a script only has to impress one person to bring you a wage, so a screenwriter should be thick skinned ahead of everything else to have any chance of being a relatively successful screenwriter.

Taking rejection on the chin is what carries a good screenwriter onto their next script. Every writer improves with time, so it is a vital attribute to be able to pick oneself up after a script has been rejected. It is important, moreover, that every writer believes that every script they write is going to change the world, because if they don’t, the lack of passion will always be evident in the actual writing.

This is exactly where durability comes to the fore as well. A writer needs to be able to sustain this passion and improvement of skill over a long period of time, from script to script, act to act, sentence to sentence. Even every individual script takes a significant amount of dedication and attention – if a writer does not put every atom of their being into every script from beginning to end, this will also be painfully obvious to every future reader.

One thing that is particularly difficult to sustain for so long is an imagination. It goes without saying that a writer needs a certain ingenuity to craft a script in the first place, but to produce one after another for months at a time is a particular – and essential – skill. A writer cannot survive without it.

This combination of skills is completed with a familiarity with the industry. There is a certain set of unwritten rules that most writers tend to abide by and it is a dangerous to jump in there with an ignorance that will see you shot down in flames.

A strong but not overwhelming sense of hubris coupled with an acute awareness of the world you are tackling is a combination that could set any writer on the path to victory, but it is vital to bolster your arsenal before you go to battle. Victory tastes so much sweeter when you know you have worked for it.

Jordan Imiola is a screenwriter from the city of good neighbors, Buffalo NY. Before moving to the city of angels, he was the first Buffalo State College student in history to be nominated for the WGA Michael Collyer Fellowship. He has worked for Fox, Disney, and Untitled Entertainment.