by Trevor Mayes | Sep 17, 2019 | Pet Peeves, Writing |
Week 1 I proofread a lot of scripts. Some mistakes I find drive me batty. And if they drive me batty, odds are they’ll do the same to other readers (i.e. gatekeepers). None irk me more than this pet peeve, but I’ve already written about that one. So for...
by Trevor Mayes | Sep 2, 2019 | Action Lines, Dialogue, Modern Craft, Writing |
Barking up the wrong tree Sometimes, it’s the easy things that can trip you up in a script. Take yelling and screaming, for instance. Seems like it would be an easy thing to indicate, but there are some common problems I’m seeing in scripts that are...
by Trevor Mayes | Aug 27, 2019 | Dialogue, Modern Craft, Writing |
Streamline Screenwriting is all about streamlining things. Any redundancies have to go. Such is the case with interruptions. And I’m seeing this mistake a lot: DON’T DO THIS TED Gloria, I can’t be in all places at onc– ...
by Trevor Mayes | Aug 16, 2019 | Formatting, Modern Craft, Text Messaging, Writing |
Superman, I defy you! I’m a big fan of David Trottier, AKA “Dr. Format” and his books, “The Screenwriter’s Bible” and “Dr. Format Tells All.” I’m also really impressed by Christopher Riley’s book, “The...
by Trevor Mayes | Jul 17, 2019 | Punctuation, Scene Headings, Writing |
CUCKOO FOR COLONS I’m seeing things like this a lot lately: MONTAGE: — Gail washes dishes. — Gail does laundry. — Gail collapses on her bed. Why is there a colon after MONTAGE? NEVER put a colon after a scene heading like MONTAGE or SEQUENCE OF...
by Trevor Mayes | Jul 9, 2019 | Characters, Writing |
Foot, meet hornet nest So there are a few screenwriting groups on Facebook that I belong to. In one of them, a concerned writer had posted an excerpt of a script reader’s review that said, “Why does the character need to be Asian?” The writer was...
