There are some scripts that just don’t work out. I’ve had many scripts that have a great logline or sound great when I describe to my friends, but the minute I put them on paper, I find myself having trouble getting them to work. Sometimes it makes no sense narratively, and other times, it’s just boring. Here’s my process to try to make sure a script will work in the planning phase before the writing process starts.
The first issue I typically notice with one of these scripts are my characters, typically their personalities. In my best scripts, I know my characters like I know my best friends. In my worst, I merely have an archetypal understanding of the character, and every time I think about what decisions they’d make (of course, based on the backstory and their past decisions) I find myself struggling. It’s like trying to decide what career a toddler will have. You have a character on paper that only has the last few pages of personality, and that is what makes them uninteresting. Now, with everything I start to break, I write the logline, then work out who fits this story, and what kind of person would be most interesting in the situations I want to write.
The next issue I have comes with the story itself. My days of opening a document and attempting to write beginning to end without a plan are over. I typically start with a beat sheet. I don’t always follow the page numbers of Save The Cat, but I like to use the beats as a way to brainstorm. Some things will deviate from the traditional Save The Cat structure, but I like to use it as my starting point. From there, I write my treatment. As someone who loves prose, treatments have been a great way for me to break the story. Ask yourself with every beat what emotions your characters are feeling in relation to the plot, to each other, and to themselves.
But of course, these habits can be hard to keep when you’re eager to break a story that you’re really into. When I do this, I take a look at my first draft, send it out for feedback, then do the process I wrote about above. I know, it’s tedious, but it’s worth it. Then, I’ll put my draft one on one side of my screen, then draft two (a blank document) on the other. Now, it’s not fully re-writing, because I’ll compare where things differ in my treatment and copy-and-paste the scenes that still work.
The other challenge that comes is abandoning what didn’t work. You have to let go of things that don’t make sense anymore for your characters. Once you add and delete things from your first draft, your characters are different people and your plot likely has different implications than it once did. You have to accept that change. Editing can take a lot of effort, but it can definitely be worth it to take your script to the next level.
-Kait
How We Write 
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