Five Common Screenwriting Mistakes Made By Film Students

Five Common Screenwriting Mistakes Made By Film Students

Common Screenwriting Mistakes I made when I was a film student. Content was always the king, is a king and will always be the king in filmmaking. I also made some of the common mistakes almost every screenwriting student does. As I am a director of a student film festival I often see these common screenwriting mistakes and I am writing this article just to avoid those mistakes in future. When you are a screenwriter you are the most responsible person in the crew and student filmmakers( especially fiction loving guys) screw there. So here are the five common mistakes screenwriting students make.

1) Writing Complex Sentences

This is the first common mistake screenwriting students make. They use complex sentences, huge words( which they search in dictionary) and common man doesn’t know their meaning. Whatever you are writing, is writing for the audience and if the audience doesn’t know what are you talking about, what’s the use of your writing. Using complex sentences doesn’t make you Shakespeare. This makes your movie boring as most of the folks doesn’t understand what’s going on. Use simple sentences. In real life we don’t use complex words in our day to day life. Make it as simple as you can.

2) Writing Long Paragraphs

When I was teaching at a reputed film school I often found out that students would write one or two pages of paragraphs. This is one of the most common screenwriting mistakes. Students often write long paragraphs. Once again make it simple. Instead writing a two page paragraph, divide it into short five-six paragraphs. That way it will be easy to read and understand.

3) Writing Too Much Description

This is also one of the most common screenwriting mistakes. When you write the description of a scene you don’t have to be describe it in couple of pages. If a character is having his dinner, do you need to describe in detail that he is having soup and then he takes a bite of bread and lifts his silver spoon,…blah…blah… is it necessary? ask yourself.

4) Clumsy Dialogs

This is the biggest mistake most of the screenwriters make(I am not using student here). You often see character chit chat a lot, why? Dialogs are to be used as fillers. When you cannot convey the message through the situation, you should use dialogs. They should be minimum and crispy. But on the contrary you see only dialogs.

5) Introduction of Characters

This is also a big mistake many filmmakers make. You have to introduce your all main characters in the beginning of the movie. You must introduce them within first few scenes and establish them with their goals, their obstacles, and what is stopping them from reaching their objectives. For a full length feature film it should be done within first 15 minutes of the movie.

Here are some common mistakes film students make.

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