# Screenwriting Tips: Start With What You Know Best

*Film, TV & Music · Marcus Reed · 2026-08-12*

## TL;DR

Screenwriting is a craft of discipline, not just inspiration. Writers should begin with familiar subjects, build layered characters, write dialogue that reveals rather than explains, and revise ruthlessly by cutting scenes that don't serve the story. Feedback from trusted readers helps refine the final draft.

## Key facts

- Screenwriters are advised to choose subjects from their own lived experience, making the material more authentic and easier to develop.
- Characters are built through specific wants, flaws, and contradictions rather than generic traits or backstory dumps.
- Dialogue in scripts works best when it is subtextual, with characters saying less than they mean and revealing themselves through action.
- The revision process involves cutting scenes that do not advance the plot or deepen character, even if they are well written.
- Seeking feedback from a small group of trusted readers is a recommended step before finalizing a screenplay.

## Screenwriting Tips: Start With the Subject You Know Best

Writing a screenplay is five percent inspiration and ninety-five percent perspiration. That is the whole secret, really. The discipline of sitting down and doing the work matters far more than waiting around for a lightning bolt of genius to strike. Every screenwriter develops their own method, and the one that follows is a personal approach that has been tested the hard way.

The first decision is the most important one: pick a subject you actually know. Not one you admire from a distance, not one that sounds impressive at a dinner party. One you have lived. When the author sat down to write their latest screenplay, they chose alcoholism. That was not a random topic pulled from a hat. It came from years of personal experience with the subject, the kind of knowledge that cannot be faked on the page.

Before that, there was a different project entirely. The author spent time working on a screenplay about Rumi, the 13th-century Sufi poet also known as Mevlana. The original account mentions that project demanded three years of research into the poet's life and work. That timeline comes from a personal anecdote with no public record to confirm it, so it is presented here as the author's own recollection rather than a verified fact. What matters for the lesson is this: even with that deep dive into historical material, the choice to write about alcoholism felt different because it came from the inside.

Once the subject is chosen, the real work begins. Read everything you can get your hands on about the topic. Build a theoretical foundation so you are not stumbling in the dark. Then watch the films that other people have already made about that subject. Not to copy them, but to make sure you are not repeating what has already been done. You cannot watch every movie ever made, of course, but you can watch the ones you can reach. That is the homework that separates a real attempt from a half-hearted one.

## How to Develop Realistic Characters for Your Script

Before you write a single line of dialogue, you need to know your main characters better than you know your closest friends. The writer behind this approach insists that you must be able to answer every question about them: their age, their education, their hobbies, their social circle, their family relationships, their sexual preference, what they love, how they speak, and even how their mood shifts between sober and drunk. If you cannot answer these questions, your characters will feel like cardboard cutouts on the page.

Take the example the writer uses: an alcoholic man. How old is he? Where did he go to school? What does he do when he is not drinking? What is his relationship with his family like? Is he funny when sober but depressive after a few drinks? Is he warm or cold? You might think, "Well, none of this will even appear in the script, so why bother?" But the point is that you need to know how your character will react to the events you throw at them. If you do not know who they are, you cannot predict their behavior, and your story will feel random.

Realistic characters also need flaws and failures, not just strengths. They need quirks that make them memorable. Maybe your character always drinks coffee, or has a strange sense of humor, or is obsessive about something. Perhaps they talk to street cats. These small details are what make an audience believe a person on screen is real.

Once you have built your main characters in your head, the writer suggests a simple exercise: imagine them in different settings and have imaginary conversations with them. This prepares you for writing dialogue later. When you finally sit down to write those conversations, remember that real speech is not written language. Record yourself talking with a friend and listen to how the conversation shifts direction, how sentences break and trail off. Dialogue is not a tool for explaining things to the audience. If you have a message, deliver it through images and events, not through your hero's mouth. Explaining the plot to the viewer as if they are stupid is the most common mistake in screenwriting.

These screenwriting tips come from a working writer who learned the hard way. As the story goes, he once spent three years researching the life of Rumi, the 13th-century Sufi poet, for an earlier screenplay. That is a deep commitment to preparation, and it shows why knowing your characters matters so much before you ever type "FADE IN."

## Writing Dialogue: Record a Real Conversation

Dialogue in a screenplay should never sound like it was written down. The author's advice is simple: grab your phone, record a conversation with a friend, and listen back to what actually happens. You will hear sentences break apart, topics veer sideways, and people talk over each other. That messy, imperfect rhythm is what your characters should speak in, not tidy, formal paragraphs.

Once you have built your main characters in your head, start placing them in different imaginary settings and let them chat. These mental rehearsals pay off when you finally sit down to write their actual exchanges. The goal is to capture how real talk shifts direction and falls apart, not how it looks on a page.

Here is the rule that matters most: never use dialogue to explain things to the audience. Dialogue exists for the characters, not for the viewers. If you have a message you want to deliver, put it into images and events instead of putting it into a character's mouth. The most common screenwriting mistake, according to the author, is treating the audience like they are too slow to follow along and having a character spell out the plot out loud. Trust your viewers to piece things together. Let your characters talk like real people, and let your story speak through what happens on screen.

## How to Structure a Screenplay Scene: Start Late

When you sit down to write a scene, resist the urge to show everything. The author's golden rule for scene structure is deceptively simple: start as late as you possibly can. If your scene is "a man leaves work, goes drinking, walks home, and sleeps," you skip the office, skip the commute, skip the first drinks. You open on his last drink, the moment everything is about to change.

This is one of those screenwriting tips that sounds counterintuitive until you see it in action. Audiences don't need the full journey. They need the turning point. The workday, the barstool small talk, the slow walk through the streets, none of that carries dramatic weight. What matters is the instant when the character's night tips from ordinary into something else. That's where your scene begins.

Side characters deserve the same ruthless treatment. If a supporting player has their own little storyline running alongside the main plot, wrap it up as quickly as you can. The author calls this a soft rule, not a hard one, but it serves the story well. Loose threads from minor characters drain energy from your protagonist's arc. Close those doors early so the audience knows exactly where to focus their attention.

Curiosity is your best friend here. The Turkish word the author uses is *merak*, that itch of wanting to know what happens next. If you want people to stay in their seats until the credits roll, you have to give them something to wonder about. Starting scenes late is one of the most reliable ways to create that pull. You drop viewers into the middle of the action, and they lean forward, needing to understand how this moment came to be.

The author offers a concrete example to make this stick. Imagine your screenplay is the story of a man who leaves his office, goes out drinking, stumbles home, and collapses into bed. The temptation is to show all of it, the gray fluorescent lights of the office, the first beer, the second one, the blurry street corners. Don't. Cut the work. Cut the walk. Cut the early drinks. Begin at the last glass, the one that changes everything about his night.

That single choice does more than save time. It forces you, the writer, to make every scene earn its place. If you can't start a scene at its most charged moment, you might be writing the wrong scene altogether. When you structure your screenplay this way, each sequence feels urgent, and the audience's curiosity does the work of keeping them hooked.

## Revising and Cutting Scenes: The 20% Rule

You think the draft is done. It isn't. The real work begins after you type the final line, and it starts with a strange ritual: walk away from it completely. The author's method demands you read the finished script from every character's perspective first, then leave the pages untouched for about fifteen days. No thinking about it, no peeking at it, no mental rewrites while you shower. Go hiking, see friends, let the story marinate in the back of your mind until it goes quiet.

When you finally return, the errors will practically jump off the page. Fix them, but understand that a correction in scene one ripples forward. Change one detail early and you'll have to adjust half a dozen moments later in the script to keep the logic intact. The author notes that a screenplay will typically go through about ten rounds of changes, though that figure is his own estimate rather than an industry standard; in practice, revision counts vary widely from writer to writer. Be ready for the long haul.

Then comes the brutal part: cutting. Read your script scene by scene and ask an honest question. If I remove this scene, does the film develop a hole? If the answer is no, that scene has to go, even if it's your favorite moment, the one you wrote with tears in your eyes. The expectation is that you'll cut about 20 percent of what you wrote. If you can't bring yourself to do it, hand the script to a smart friend and ask them to chop 20 percent for you. Read it again after they're done and notice how the story breathes better without the dead weight.

Now find a few sensible people who won't steal your work and let them read it. Pay close attention to what they say. Anyone who tells you "I understood it, I loved it" gets ignored; they're not helping you improve. Instead, fix whatever they didn't understand and take seriously the criticism of what they didn't like. Set the script aside for another month, a full thirty days of distance, then read it cold. You'll likely find places that feel wrong, too thin, or overly padded. If the problems run deep, consider rewriting from scratch. It sounds drastic, but a fresh start often saves a story that patchwork editing would only mangle.

## Getting Feedback on Your Screenplay: Spelling Matters

If a producer or director is going to read your script, every single spelling error becomes a rejection letter waiting to happen. The author of these screenwriting tips learned this the hard way with their very first screenplay, when a famous producer reportedly refused to even open the pages. The producer's alleged response cut deep: if you don't respect your own script enough to proofread it, why should anyone else spend their time on it?

According to the original account, the author had chased this producer relentlessly, knocking on every door and exhausting every connection just to get the script into the right hands. Years of ekşi sözlük forum habits had left the writing full of careless capitalization and spelling slips. When the producer finally held the manuscript, he didn't flip through scenes or check the dialogue. He glanced at the text, declared it unfinished, and shoved it back. The author protested that the man hadn't even read a single page. The producer's reported reply was brutal in its logic: a writer who can't be bothered to clean up their own work is showing exactly how much they value it.

The story may or may not have happened exactly as told, since no producer was ever named and no public record exists to confirm it. But the lesson lands regardless of whether the anecdote is fully accurate. Before you send your screenplay anywhere, read it aloud, read it backwards, have someone else check every comma and capital letter. Typos are the cheapest fix in the entire writing process, and they're also the fastest way to get your work dismissed.

For those who want to dig deeper into the craft, the author points to a book about good screenwriting and editing. The title appears in the source as "töbkbkydöavda," a reference that reportedly runs longer than fifty characters and caused some forum posting complications. Whatever the exact title, the recommendation stands: study how experienced writers structure their revisions before you submit your own work anywhere.


## Frequently asked questions

**What is the first step to writing a screenplay?**

Pick a subject you genuinely know well, then research it until you are the local expert. Read everything you can find on the topic and watch every film already made about it, so you do not accidentally repeat what has been done. This groundwork keeps your story fresh and your details honest. One working screenwriter describes the craft as five percent inspiration and ninety-five percent perspiration. Before a single line of dialogue, you need a subject you can defend from every angle. If you are a plain, ordinary person, do not reach for a love story just because it sounds romantic. Choose the thing you know in your bones, the way this writer picked alcoholism for a recent script because it was his own lived territory.

**How do I develop realistic characters for my script?**

Build a complete profile for each main character before writing any scenes. Ask yourself their age, education, habits, family ties, sense of humor, and what they do when they are not at the center of your plot. Give them quirks, weaknesses, and failures alongside their strengths, so they feel like someone you could meet on the street. Once you know your characters inside out, start holding imaginary conversations between them in your head. Put them in different rooms, different moods, different arguments. When you finally sit down to write dialogue, you will already know exactly how each person would respond. That preparation makes the difference between characters who talk like people and characters who talk like pages of a book.

**Why is dialogue important in a screenplay?**

Dialogue should sound like real, broken speech, the way people actually talk when they interrupt each other and trail off mid-sentence. Record a conversation with a friend and listen to how often the topic shifts and how many sentences never finish. Your characters should do the same thing, not deliver clean, written paragraphs. Never use dialogue to explain your plot to the audience. If a character has to announce what is happening, you have already failed as a storyteller. Deliver your message through images and events instead. Treating the viewer like they are too slow to follow along is the most common mistake in screenwriting, and audiences can feel it instantly.

**How should I structure the scenes in my screenplay?**

Start as late in the event as possible, skipping the setup and jumping straight into the most dramatic moment. If your story is about a man who drinks, leaves work, walks home, and passes out, begin at the final drink, not the first one. Cut the work, cut the walk, cut everything that happens before the tension arrives. Films are usually just a slice of a life, not the whole biography. You do not need the character's birth, childhood, or morning routine unless those details directly serve the story. For any side characters, try to wrap up their threads as early as you can. The less baggage you carry into the middle of your script, the more room you have for the moments that actually matter.

**What is the best way to revise a screenplay draft?**

Set the finished draft aside for fifteen days and do not think about it at all. Go for walks, spend time with friends, let the story leave your head completely. When you come back, you will see the mistakes clearly because you are no longer wearing the blinders of someone who just finished writing. Fix what you find, then be ready to repeat the process. After corrections, read through scene by scene and ask whether removing each one would hurt the film. If the answer is no, cut it, even if it is your favorite scene. Expect to lose about twenty percent of what you wrote. Then put the script away for a full month, come back, and be willing to rewrite from scratch if that is what the story needs.

**How can I get useful feedback on my screenplay?**

Show your script to sensible people you trust, people smart enough to understand what you are trying to do and honest enough to tell you when you missed. When they say they loved everything, ignore them. When they say they did not understand something, fix that part immediately or cut it entirely. The feedback you want is specific, not flattering. Someone who cannot tell you what confused them is not going to help you grow. Pay attention to the criticism that stings a little, because that is usually the truth you needed to hear. The people who just cheer you on will not make your next draft any better.

**Why is research important when writing a screenplay?**

Research gives you the theoretical knowledge to write convincingly about a world you did not grow up in. Knowing a subject personally is not enough on its own. You need to understand how other filmmakers have approached the same material, so your version does not accidentally copy theirs. Watch every film on your topic that you can reach, even if you cannot see them all. One writer recalls spending three years researching Rumi, the 13th-century Sufi poet, for an earlier screenplay. That kind of deep preparation shows up in the details, in the confidence of a scene, in the way a character speaks about their world. Without it, you are walking blind and likely to wander down the wrong path.

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