Red Flags for Screenwriters
Barbara R. Nicolosi

12 practices to avoid with your screenplay.

Red Flag #1 Anything on the cover page except the title, writer’s name and contact info and WGA Registration number.

DON’T use fancy fonts, colored ink or colored paper on your cover page.
DON’T stick photos or sketches or anything on the cover page

Red Flag #2 Anything at all attached to the inside of your screenplay.

DON’T make sketches of costumes or characters.
DON’T attach location photos.
DON’T include poems or newspaper articles or any supporting materials.
DON’T try to sell your project with anything other than the words on the pages

Red Flag #3 Anything other than your screen story

DON’T include character lists and suggestions of actors
DON’T attach budgets, letters of support, or coverage from other readers

Red Flag #4 Incorrect Formatting

ONLY scripts typed in font Courier 12 are acceptable.
MARGINS should be uniform and according to industry standard. (Left side description = 1.5”; Left side dialogue = 2.5”; Right side description = 1”; Right side dialogue = 2”)
PARENTHETICALS, CAPITALIZATIONS, LINE SPACING, SPECIAL EFFECTS, SLUG LINES and SOUND EFFECTS all should be formatted according to industry standard.

Red Flag #5 Mistakes in Grammar and Spelling

Red Flag #6 Consistency errors

DON’T refer to characters with more than one title. Don’t use nicknames. Don’t use their last names in some places and their first names in other places. (Using other titles in lines of dialogue is, of course, allowed.)
SLUG LINES referring to the same location should all be the same. Don’t call it “The BARN” in one slug line, and then “THE RED BARN” in another.

Red Flag #7 Trying to do the job of other people in the production process

DON’T describe the musical score. (Only specify music if the characters in the story can hear it too.)
DON’T over-choreograph the action in a scene.
AVOID describing camera angles. (Avoid using the word “camera”)
DON’T go into detail of a character’s eye and hair color and height and weight.

DON’T do a detailed description of their clothing. (Give the reader a sense of how the character is dressed, but don’t specify that a character be a redhead unless it is integral to the story.)
DON’T give detailed descriptions of standard locations like courtrooms, airports, churches, city streets, bars, etc. Only describe elements or props necessary to the narrative that would be out of the ordinary in such a setting. (Give the reader a sense of the location: it’s drab, or it’s crowded or it’s trendy or it’s shabby. You can give an example or two that speak volumes, but don’t usurp the production designer’s role.)

Red Flag #8 Ripping off any other movie or book or turn of phrase

DON’T use any cliché without calling attention to the fact that it’s a cliché.
DON’T rework any scene or device from any movie no matter how old.

Red Flag #9 Giving the reader any information that the viewer won’t have.

DON’T put “NOTES TO THE READER” or parentheses explaining historical details or character’s motivations.
DON’T cheat out a character’s whole backstory in introducing him or her. (You can tell us in presenting her that Mary’s “been around the block in love,” but you can’t tell us that because her father and mother split up Mary has been married three times and has given up on ever finding a lasting relationship.

Red Flag #10 Using the dialogue to parrot the images and advance the narrative.

DIALOGUE should provide another level of meaning to a scene.
VISUALS should advance the narrative as much as possible.

Red Flag #11 Using adverbs

DON’T take the easy way out. Give the actors something to do to show their inner state.

Red Flag #12 Giving us way more scenes/shots than we need to follow the story

RESPECT the sophistication of your viewers. We don’t need to see every step of the journey to follow your character from New York to Paris.