As promised, the following is a list of sixteen deadly sins screenwriters commit that causes story analysts to cringe and write “Pass” on their coverage.  There are more faux pas a writer can commit on the page, but the list below are the ones I personally dread coming across in your screenplay. I offer them in no particular order, but you should consider them all to be as equally important as the first:

1)   Make your concept something I can see on a poster and pitch effectively in one sentence.

2)   Don’t write a “fixer-upper” assuming that your high concept is what will sell without crafting the plot, building the characters and honing the dialogue.

3)   Don’t include novel-like narrative description prose or long-winded, chunky dialogue.

4)   I know within the first ten pages if a screenplay is going to be a PASS or a CONSIDER. Make your first ten pages bullet proof.  And all the pages thereafter.

5)   Know the difference between “their,” “there,” and “they’re.” Or “your,” “yore,” and “you’re,” for that matter.

6)   PROOFREED! (sic)

7)   Learn proper script formatting or invest in screenwriting software that does it for you.

8)   Don’t try to type out a scream, e.g., “Aaaaarrrrgghhhh!” or “Eeeeeeeeeeeeek!” or “Noooooooooo!” How inadvertently comic is that? Instead, in the narrative description just say, “She screams.”

9)   Don’t impart character traits, back story, or your character’s interior thoughts in the description that a movie audience couldn’t see in the action or hear in the dialogue.

10)  It’s called “motion picture” for a reason – please include cinematic visual story action to put on the screen that helps the plot to progress.

11)  Be consistent with your character’s name. Don’t sometimes call him by his first name in dialogue and sometimes by his last name in the narrative description. Confuses the hell out of me. Especially if you’ve given me twenty side characters to track.

12) Don’t rely on a verbal info-dump to catch your audience up to speed after some complex plotting. If you have to explain your twist or reveal after the fact via dialogue, it’s not a good twist or reveal.

13) Never use the word “strut.” (Okay. Admittedly, that’s just a reader pet peeve of mine –  all professional readers have them - but seriously I’ve never read a good script that had the word “strut” in it. Unless you are referring to a turkey or John Travolta walking down the street in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, nothing else on this planet realistically struts. Strutting = Ridiculous)

14)  It may sound silly, but most readers who get a script submission that has three brads rather than two brads holding the pages together instantly know they are dealing with a newbie writer. Luckily, since most scripts are now .pdf-ed around town, the “brad factor” doesn’t come into play much anymore. But if you are going to use brads, please use the very tough, large ones, and not the flimsy, baby brads that cause your script to come apart in my hands and makes me “Aaaaarrrrgghhhh!” in frustration.

15) Don’t make me use any of the following words in my comments about your story: “contrived,” “convoluted,” “verbose,” “superfluous,” “extraneous,” “pedestrian,” or “on the nose (too obvious).”

And finally…

16)  A screenplay that is over 125 pages is usually an automatic pass just on general principal.  Please don’t recite James Cameron’s screenplay page lengths to me as your defense for writing your 178-page magnum opus… James Cameron overwrites his screenplays because he knows he’s going to direct them and edit out huge chunks of the story in post. Plus, he’s James Cameron.

So there you have it. Sixteen (count ‘em, 16!) sins to avoid committing in your own screenplay to help make story analysts want to suggest to their executives that s/he stop what they are doing and read your script NOW. I WANT that to happen for you. I WANT you win multiple Oscars. I really do. Because I’m on your side, remember? I’m rooting for you.