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Lesson 3
Reply to post your assignments.
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8 Replies
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Jeffrey Alan Chase is a Proofreading Star!
My vision: I am an “A” list writer who is known for high concept ideas, great execution, a string of successful movies and is always ready to share his knowledge and do what he can to help another writer on the way up.
What I learned from doing this assignment is: After over 20 drafts I thought I had weeded out any possibility of typos, punctuation, grammar, etc. Going through the script forwards and backwards and voila! Didn’t find anything to fix. I’ll be interested to see if whoever I exchange my script with can pick up on something that I missed.
Title: Shards
Genre: Psychological Suspense Thriller
High Concept Logline: A young, pottery restoration expert with no memory of her childhood pieces together a dark past to discover her hypnotherapist’s ties to her father’s murder and a Conquistador treasure.
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Farrin Rosenthal is a Proofreading Star!
Farrin’s Vision: To do what it takes to become a highly paid A-List Hollywood writer whose produced movies will entertain audiences around the world.
What I learned doing this assignment is how to become a proofreading star!
I’m really great at spotting typos in my script or anybody else’s script. However, no matter how great I am, I still will miss some typos.
We can choose from two proofreading processes: Process A. Read it out loud.
Process B. Read it backwards. Then search for and change any of these mistakes: a. Typos. Especially words like “their, there, and they’re.”
b. Doubled words.
c. Incomplete sentences.
d. Lines that don’t feel right.
e. Redundancies.
f. Punctuation errors.For my script, I chose to read my script out loud.
Actually, this is the first time I’ve ever tried the following technique:
I use Final Draft software and assigned voices to my main characters then had the program read the script out loud. I listened with my eyes closed. The voice the computer uses are computer generated and sound like a computer speaking. It reads it too slow and it sounds unrealistic. But it worked! I heard my dialogue spoken out loud. Anything bad will stick out.
Any typos when spoken out loud become obvious and just listening revealed at least two typos I missed when I read through the script myself. One example occurred in dialogue.
I wrote $12 dollars. To me, I look at that and it seems fine, but when the computer spoke it, it came out as twelve dollars dollars, so I removed the dollar sign, to fix the typo. Now it reads twelve dollars. Either use $12 or twelve dollars, but not $12 dollars! lol
I highly recommend listening to your script with your eyes closed. Yes, until they improve the sounds and speed, it will sound crappy and take forever, but I guarantee, typos and anything not quite right will become obvious.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Farrin Rosenthal.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by
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Andrew Kelm Is a Proofreading Star!
Vision: I am going to do whatever it takes to be a great writer of TV and movies who is sought after by people I respect within the industry and has multiple successful TV series produced.
What I learned doing this assignment is… I did the backwards read and discovered a few spelling mistakes and grammar issues. The big discovery was that the last five scenes still need work. They still feel sketched in. So I need to tackle that still.
FATEMONGERS; a psychic with a blind spot for abusive men uses subtle manipulations to murder a sexual predator who seduces her to get to her sons.
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Rebecca is a Proofreading Star!
I learned from this assignment that I will never get my script perfect. My mind will always look for ways to make it better. I also learned that using both Process A and B helped me see what needed correction and improvement.
Reading the script aloud helped with word flow, especially with dialog and finding punctuation errors. Double letters, words, and lines that didn’t flow right. In process B, reading the script backward helped me find the minor mistakes I overlooked when reading it aloud.
A lot of minor errors add up in a 120-page script. Correcting those that stand out and those less obvious helped to improve my writing.
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Jane is a Proofreading Star!
MY VISION: I will make my living as a screenwriter by selling my own narrative scripts and successfully fulfilling writing assignments.
By doing this assignment I not only found typos, but was able to cut another page of script by tightening both action and dialogue. I tried reading backwards for awhile, but had a bit of trouble doing that. So, I turned to reading it out loud, one scene at a time. That really helped me discover same words that were used too often and/or too close together as well as dialogue that read fine, but when spoken, sounded clunky. I also found a few places where the character’s voice was just wrong, so I changed the dialogue.
It’s very tempting to keep going back over and over the script and finding things wrong or different ways to do things. However, I’m pretty happy with the script right now and excited to have someone else read it. To me it’s comical as well as a mystery. I hope that’s true for those who read it!
Title: Not a Clue!
Genre: Parody of a Tea-Cozy Murder Mystery
Concept: In this parody on tea cozy murder mysteries, a Poirot-like
character and a Miss Marple-like character compete to prove which of them is
the greatest detective only to discover that a murder has happened and that one
of them is the next victim. -
Eclipse Neilson loves proofreading
Vision: I want to be a great award-winning writer, known for my genre, who creates the most beautiful films that inspire others to feel deeply, pause, and ponder ways to make the world a better place as I make happy money to continue my career.
THE NUN AND THE WITCH genre: Mystical Sci-fi
A dedicated nun, bonds with her beloved soulmate – the village witch to help battle the evils of hatred consuming the heart of humanity, only to discover that time is running out and hell has permeated their village.
This is the hardest for me because my mind often goes faster and misses a mistake. I practiced reading last scene first and going backward. I randomly went to a scene and read it looking for typos and hanging words and whatever else.
I also continue t improve here and there a scene’s intensity and purpose.
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Tom is a Proofreading Star!
Doing this assignment, I learned reading backwards makes it easier to spot errors.
I read my script backwards.
This enabled me to spot lines which felt wrong but I had overlooked!
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Lori Lance Is a Proofreading Star!
What I learned….I’ve used the read-a-loud tool ever since I have had Final Draft. It is easy to read lines as you think they are written but hearing them brings out mistakes that are easy to overlook. While reading backward is tedious, it has value. Even though I had already listened to the script being read, I still found a couple of errors with this method. Also, I found a few things I wanted to change when reading backward.
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