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By, Jacob Krueger

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How do you know when your screenplay is done?

Podcast Transcript:

Recently we’ve been getting a lot of questions from our listeners, so I’m going to use today’s podcast to answer one of the most frequently asked questions. If you have a question for me that you would like answered, feel free to reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter and I’ll try to answer as many of them as I can on this podcast.

 

The question that we’re going to be discussing today is one that comes up all the time, “How do you know when your screenplay is done?”

 

I felt this is a particularly interesting question to look at, especially in light of the concepts we discussed last week about pitching.

 

Obviously you don’t want to be going out trying to sell your script, trying to pitch your script, if it’s not done. And at the same time, as screenwriters we find ourselves in this endless cycle of not done, not done, not done, not done, not done, not done. Rewriting, rewriting, rewriting. Starting over, starting over, starting over.

 

So how do you know when that cycle needs to end? How do you know when your script is actually done?

 

One of the things you have to understand if you’re going to answer this question is that there's a big difference between two words that we often use interchangeably. There’s a big difference between finished and done.

 

I believe it was Oscar Wilde who first said, great scripts “aren’t finished, they’re merely abandoned.”

 

As much as we would like to believe that someday this darn thing is truly going to be done, the truth is there is almost always more that we can do to a script. There’s almost always something we could ask, something that we could deepen, something that we could layer or nuance.

 

That means our criteria for actually completing our goals when it comes to screenwriting are actually different from almost any non-artistic field that we could be working in. I think this is true for any art, whether it’s painting, novels, poetry, or music. In the arts, we don’t get the same feeling of completion that an accountant gets. Or that a salesperson gets. Or that a burger flipper gets. There’s no clear place where it is truly done where all the criteria have been met.

 

So if we’re going to feel successful, if we’re going to be successful, and if we’re even going to know we're successful, we need a different way of evaluating ourselves. We need a different type of criteria.

 

We can’t just use a checklist because there’s always going to be something else added to that checklist. We can’t just use a bunch of coverage notes because no matter how brilliant your coverage reader may be-- and the truth is, a lot of them are not brilliant -- they’re going to be full of conflicting feedback. And as soon as you start making changes, half of those written notes are going to change and are no longer going to be valid.

 

We can’t merely rely on the advice of others, because our work is subjective and some people are going to love it, and some people are going to hate it.

 

So what are we supposed to rely on?

 

What we actually need to rely on are two separate things that end up working together. We need to first rely on our feelings as the writer. Then we need to rely on the feedback that we’re receiving from the outside. And this is where that distinction between finished and done becomes so important.

Every time you reach the end of a draft, there are two very important questions you need to ask yourself. Question number 1 is “Am I done?