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Lesson 3
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8 Replies
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Subject: Monica Is a Proofreading Star!
Vision: I will continue to learn everything I can through all different media to apply what I learn to become the best screenwriter I can be. To be successful in getting my movies made and to win awards in the process.
What I learned from doing this assignment is not to discount the value of this process.
The process I chose is to read it out loud. Or Final Draft read it out loud.
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WIM2 Module 9 Lesson 3 – Proofreading Your Script
Lisa Long is a Proofreading Star!
My Vision: I will do whatever it takes to be comfortable saying that I am a writer by creating impactful stories with amazing characters in order to sell my scripts.
What I learned from this assignment is that one must read and re-read your script front to back and back to front checking for needed changes or mistakes. The cleaner the script the easier and faster the read.
Proofreading was invaluable. Not only did I find mistakes, but I found many repetitive words and rewrote some of it to make more sense.
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Erin Ziccarelli Is a Proofreading Star!
Vision: I am creating profound scripts that leave audiences remembering my movies and leave me excited to keep writing and moving up in the industry.
What I learned from doing this assignment is: this is my first time using Final Draft’s “read aloud” function. It took a couple minutes to get used to the monotone voice, but once I did I caught several phrases that sounded “out of place” and were definitely left over from my Module 5 drafts.
4. Tell us how much of a difference this made for your script.
This is the first time I’ve heard my script read out loud, so that helped me catch some of the out of place phrases. I also recommend copying your script into a google doc or word document, because the word/spell checks are a little more advanced than Final Draft.
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Again, for the proofreading, as I said, I’ve been a week working on a script to send out to Chuck Lorre. And the proofreading was excruciating. I made 4 passes on it to make sure it was mistake. I have a fifth one being done by a friend of mine who is an up and coming film director producer. If that isn’t what this lesson is all about, I don’t now what is. Do it until you have a huge headache from it.
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Marcus Is a Proofreading Star!
Vision: Get this script optioned.
This in depth proofreading allowed me to catch a number of errors. Particularly, there were several places where I had skipped a word, usually something like “to”. The last thing I want is to distract a reader with a bunch of typos.
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Andrew Boyd: Elevate key words, cut distractions
Vision: For Hitler’s Choirboys to be such a compelling screenplay that Spielberg and Gibson will battle it out to produce their most powerful WW2 drama since Hacksaw Ridge or Schindler’s List.
What I learned from doing this assignment:
I was surprised to find so many repetitions. There were 97 uses of ‘eyes’, 68 of ‘over, 44 each of ‘head’ and ‘get’, and 31 of ‘Look’ or ‘looks’
I made 57 changes, including eliminating one entire line that was repeated.
Here’s an example with ‘head’:
Before:
A woman HUSTLER heads his way. Seeing the meal ticket is black, she stops dead and hurries back.
After:
A woman HUSTLER zeroes in. Seeing the meal ticket is black, she stops dead and hurries back.
And here’s the line that was repeated:
The gun shakes in his outstretched hand, inches from Henry’s face. Henry looks beyond it and straight at Sam. [This last sentence was repeated a couple of paragraphs later.]
Sometimes there is no good alternative to the obvious word, in which case, it’s best left as it is.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by Andrew Boyd.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by
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Joel Stern is a Proof Reading Star!
My Vision: To write eight screenplays that eventually become Hollywood blockbusters (and to get a speaking line in at least one. Aim high!).
What I learned from this lesson: Various methods to make sure descriptions are short and to the point and ways to eliminate typos and redundant words.
I found perhaps 15-20 errors. They popped up just when I thought they were gone!
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Andrew Boyd’s Proofreading
Vision: For Hitler’s Choirboys to be such a compelling screenplay that Spielberg and Gibson will battle it out to produce their most powerful WW2 drama since Hacksaw Ridge or Schindler’s List.
What I learned from doing this assignment: It doesn’t matter how many times you proofread a script you will still find mistakes. I have read this out loud several times. While I can catch spelling errors this way, what the eye and ear tend to miss is punctuation, especially stray spaces. After reading it out loud again, I ran spell and grammar checks in both Word and Scrivener. Word was more accurate.
During the course of proofing I made a number of improvements to the script that the process highlighted.
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