With an emphasis on film, below are Will’s top tips:
1) Know your genre inside out – your audience does
2) Never forget your audience! – would you pay £8.50 to watch what you are writing?
3) Film is a visual medium, write for the big canvass and think to scale. What works on the big screen and what is better on the small screen?
4) Keep yourself in check and ask yourself what it is, deep down, that are you trying to say and why the audience should care – what is your film actually about?
5) Try to locate the universal theme in your work and thread it through the narrative so you can connect to a broad audience
6) Ask yourself what makes your work original and if you can’t come up with answer we may well have seen it before (and therefore might not want to see it again!)
7) Keep it lean and economical, think of your screenplay as a blueprint or map for a production team and director.
Writer/directors – if it isn’t clear on the page then it isn’t clear. ‘I know what it looks like in my head’ only works for you, nobody else.
9) There is nothing wrong with simplicity. Being clear doesn’t mean something cannot be sophisticated or complex – it is your job as a screenwriter to render your idea clearly and economically on the page so that whatever you are writing is easy to read. There’s a difference between being unclear and being ambiguous. If you want to be ambiguous, do it clearly.
10) Remember that you are one link in a long, collaborative chain. A vital, wonderful, indispensible link, but a link nonetheless.
