The five hardest scriptwriting lessons to learn | National Centre for Writing | NCW

Writing the script isn't the work

It's so tempting, after coming up with an idea, to immediately sit down and start to write. Dialogue flows... images spill out... writing is happening! I'm doing it mum! But so often in this case, we get to page 30 (or 20, or 10) and we lose momentum. That's because the real work is in the planning. With scriptwriting, beautiful sentences and witty dialogue matter far less than action and consequence. Scenes are units of action that build to create story. Everything happens for a reason. Before opening my script software, I'll have been working for weeks on planning documents, character profiles, story arcs and structure.