So I have been asked to give something of a pep-talk to the thousands of you who will be participating in the Script Frenzy Challenge; to offer encouragement to the writers behind the over 20,000 scripts that will be written in the span of that 30 days. When greeted with that very flattering request, I had only one question. Well… two, actually. The second question was "How long does it have to be?"

The first question was "Encourage 20,000 scripts to be written in a month? Are you kidding me?" (I guess that’s two questions, meaning that the second question above was really the third… but I suck at math and I hate revising so that first paragraph will stand.) As my name indicates, I am a script reader, and so far too many precious hours of my life have been stolen by bad writing. I’m not sure I had it in me to inspire that many more writers to try their hand at it. Imagine the ramifications if one of you grew up to be the next whoever-it-was-that-wrote-Wolverine?

But I like seeing my name in print, so I’ll take a swing at this.

A full screenplay in a month. 100 pages in 30 days. Wow, there’s only one word that springs to mind.

Lazy.

Every last one of you: L-A-Z-Y. 100 pages in 30 days is… let’s see… carry the six… move the decimal… Screw it, I’ll get the calculator. Ah! Three and a third pages a day. You’re kidding me, right? That’s supposed to be challenging? It takes no time at all to fill up a page in a screenplay, have you seen how much white space is on a page (as long as you’re doing it right?) If you start with three and a third blank sheets of paper, you’ve already done at least 70% of the work!

There’s no doubt all of you should be able to finish without breaking a sweat, with tons of time left on the clock. That means odds are good that a few of you thieves will rob me of precious hours of my life when you submit these opuses to the people I work for. With that in mind, I offer these words of wisdom so that when I read your script, I may briefly have an hour whereupon I don’t regret not applying to law school.

Planning is your friend. I recently embarked on a screenplay without any formal planning whatsoever. I had a hook, and I just went from there, scene-by-scene. I thought it would be an interesting experiment in stream of consciousness writing, but by p. 30, the themes of the story had started to emerge and I found myself unconsciously sketching out the next sixty pages well before I got there. When it came time to clean up the draft, the bulk of edits came from those first 30 pages, where I had wandered without figuring out the characters’ voices or the direction of the plot. Perhaps working without a net got the draft finished sooner, but the rewriting it took to get into shape to show people probably ate up any time I saved. Even if you only have a bullet-point type list of plot points and character moments, it’s better than nothing. If you don’t know your destination, how the hell can you plot the journey?

Figure out how your theme develops your characters before you start writing. Would you have an answer if someone asked you "What’s it about?" I’m not talking about the plot. I’m talking about what the script means – the themes, the personal arcs. Up in the Air is not about a man who fires people for a living who is forced to take a protégée on the road with him to show her the ropes. It’s about a man who has deliberately built a life without any significant connections to anyone and anything, and through changes in his job, a new relationship, and a family wedding, begins to see how empty that life is. I’ve read too many scripts that seem to have little more inspiration than "Okay, they’re vampires… from space!"

Know your audience. I once gave a development VP one of my first specs, a male-oriented romantic comedy. The VP’s first question for me – "Bitter, who goes to see romantic comedies?" The answer – "Women." Presumably, a romantic comedy from the guys’ POV wouldn’t hold a great deal of appeal for them. If you’re writing to sell – and I assume most of you are, as it’s not as if screenplays are usually considered a work of art unto themselves like novels, comic books and poems – then you need to keep this in mind. Don’t write something that nobody wants to see. 17th Century costume dramas? Dead. Iraq and Afghanistan war dramas? Dead, despite The Hurt Locker. (Can you name one financially successful film built around the Iraq War?) Know the box that your movie belongs in, and make sure it’s one that people are buying. I’m sure a few writing snobs will accuse me of telling you to sell out, but as my friend says, "It’s not selling out, it’s buying in!"

Each day, perform your dialogue outloud in a one-man show. Nothing will get rid of the "All characters sound just like me" syndrome faster than this. Encourage your inner ham. Strive to make your performance interesting to yourself and in the process you will find what makes your characters unique.

Do all of those and you too can one day sell a script and then be rewritten by Akiva Goldsman, the wordsmith behind dialogue like Batman & Robin’s "Ice to see you!"

Oh, and I forgot one more rule.

Have fun. And don’t forget to put page numbers on your scripts.

(I know. That was two. I told you I suck at math.)

The Bitter Script Reader has been reading scripts for agencies, development executives and production companies for seven years now, so is it any wonder he's bitter?  For the last year plus, he's been writing a blog at http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/ in an effort to make his job less painful by educating new writers about what bad writing tropes will land their scripts in the PASS pile.