You wrote the first draft of your pilot script and it’s… a little rough. There’s some good stuff, some okay stuff, and some stuff that’s… not great. It’s probably not strong enough to try and sell or use as a writing sample.

So, how do you turn a first draft of a pilot into a final draft?

Hold Yourself to a Higher Standard

The first thing you need when you’re revising your pilot script is the right mindset. In the previous lesson on writing first drafts I talked about the idea of vomit drafts. Vomit drafts are where you just get the first draft down on paper and don’t worry too much about making it great. It lowers the pressure, and that’s really helpful when you’re getting started or trying to overcome writer’s block.

But that mindset isn’t great when it comes to revisions. You need to hold yourself and your work to a higher standard, because when revising you’re not only improving the stuff that’s bad, you’re also improving the stuff that’s just okay. Because just okay isn’t good enough. You want it all to be as strong as possible.

It’s counterintuitive, but sometimes it’s actually harder to fix the okay stuff than the really bad stuff, because it’s obvious that the bad stuff needs to be revised, but with the okay stuff you can convince yourself that it’s good enough. But it’s not. So try and dig deep.

I’m not saying you have to fix everything all at once and your second draft has to be perfect. You can do this layer by layer over multiple revisions. The later the revision, the higher your standards should be. Remember, revising is a process.

Take A Break, Read It Twice

That process starts with reading back over your script, but don’t read it right after you finish writing the first draft. Set it down for a few days or a week, or whatever time length works for you, so you can get a little distance from it. When you come back to it you want to try and read it from the perspective of the Reader, not the writer.

The first time you read through it, try doing so without stopping to get a sense of the flow of the script. When you’re done, write down your impressions. Try answering these questions:

• What was working in the pilot?
• What wasn’t?
• Where did it seem slow?
• What were your impressions of the characters?
• Was it clear what your main characters wanted?
• Were they actively trying to get it?

Then read through it a second time and take notes. If you’re reading a print out or PDF, leave notes in the margins. If you’re reading it in Arc Studio, use the comments feature to leave comments for yourself.

Think about why your impressions from the first read were happening. In your first read you’re thinking about what is working and not working in the script, and in the second read you’re thinking about why it it’s not working. This will give you the  basis for what you need to tackle in your next draft.

This can also be a good time to go back to Lessons 1 through Lessons 5, because some of those concepts that were abstract before are now concrete. All the elements from the first five lessons should be in your script. If they’re not yet, don’t worry. That’s what revising is for.

Get Feedback from Trusted Readers

I highly advise you to get feedback on your script from trusted and knowledgeable readers, like other screenwriters, teachers, executives, producers, managers, and/or agents.‍

When you do this depends on your script. If your first draft is really rough, if it needs a lot of work, I don’t advise getting notes on it yet from other readers. Why wait? Because if the draft is a mess those readers aren’t going to know what you’re trying to accomplish so they won’t be able to help you get there. I generally recommend doing at least one revision on your own before getting feedback from others, but it might take multiple revisions before you hand it off.

Now, you may not know trusted and knowledgeable readers who can give you feedback. So where do you get notes from? Well, you have a few options.

First, you can try and find a community of writers online or where you live.

Second, you can take a screenwriting class.

Third, you can get notes from people you know who are smart and thoughtful, but aren’t screenwriters or in the industry. Now the quality of these notes can vary. The less knowledgeable your readers are, the more specific you need to be in your questions to them. If you just say, “What’d you think?” They’ll say something like “It’s cool!” or “Wow, you wrote a script!” And that is not very helpful. Instead ask them questions like, “What do you think this show is about?” “What do you think the main character wants? Why do they want it?” “Where did you find yourself losing interest as you were reading? Where did you find you were really engaged?”

Fourth, you can pay to get notes from services like The Black List or Coverfly. This is called getting coverage. I don’t know what your budget is, so you will have to decide for yourself whether the cost is worth it to you.

The Note Behind the Note

One thing to know about notes is that some of them will be bad. Readers may try to force their POV on the script or not understand what you’re trying to do or just be wrong. But even bad notes can be helpful, because even though they might be misidentifying the problem or pitching a solution that’s wrong, they might be identifying that a problem exists.

They just don’t know exactly what it is or how to fix it.

In screenwriting we call this “the note behind the note,” it’s the true issue about your script identified by a bad note. It’s up to you as the writer to figure out what the real problem actually is and how to fix it.

Big Things First: Story and Character

There are a lot of different elements in a pilot script, and trying to work on everything at once can feel overwhelming. Starting by fixing the big things. You don’t want to waste a lot of time and effort fine-tuning scenes descriptions or dialogue that might not even exist in the next draft.

In your early revisions I’d start by working on the story and character problems. You’ll probably realize that even if you outlined your story and developed the characters first… a lot of it doesn’t work or at isn’t working like you thought. Sometimes story beats that seem great in the outline turn out to be duds in the script. And sometimes character arcs that seemed clear in your head aren’t coming through.

For the story structure, think about what we learned in Lesson 3 and Lesson 4. I’m not going to go over those lessons again, but here are some questions to consider:

• Does your script have a beginning, middle, and end?
• Are you hooking the audience in the beginning?
• Is your inciting incident happening early?
• Are you escalating and complicating things in the middle?
• Are you building to a climax?

You may need to move your story beats around, and you’ll probably need to cut some beats and think of new ones. So feel free to make a new outline.

For your characters, think about what we learned in Lesson 2.

• Does your main character have a clear external goal? Something they want in their life that starts in the pilot?
• Are they actively pursuing the goal, or are they just passengers in the story?
• Do they have an internal goal, that underlying emotional or psychological reason why they want the external goal?

Also remember the idea of the fundamental disconnect between what they want and the reality of their world. That disconnect should be causing problems. And finally, your characters should be going on an emotional journey. They don’t end the pilot in the same place where they started it.

Script Momentum

After you’ve dealt with your story and character issues, you can start to look at how it is all flowing together. People talk a lot about “Pacing” and it’s one of those words that feels very abstract, like “Theme.” But I like to think of pacing as momentum. Does the reader feel like they’re being pushed forward through the script? Are you taking them for a ride?

This means that they’re not reading the scenes individually. Ideally they shouldn’t even notice when one scene ends and another begins.

There are a lot of ways you can do that. I recommend revisiting Lesson 5 for more on this, but here are some pointers:

1. Make sure you don’t have a lot of extra fluff in scenes. Scripts tend to feel slow when scenes either go longer than they need to go or take a while to get to the point. Think about what you want to accomplish in each scene, and get out of the scene once you’ve accomplished it.
2. Scripts also feel slow when the scenes aren’t connected to each other. Remember when we learned about complications and consequences? If one scene brings up a complication, there’s a good chance that the next scene will involve a consequence to the complication.
3. Scenes can also feel slow when they lack conflict, so make sure most of your scenes involve a conflict. This doesn’t mean there’s a fight, it means that someone wants something and is trying to get it, but they’re facing an obstacle.
4. Finally, make sure that the scenes are serving a purpose. Not every scene has to be furthering the plot, you can have scenes that are about character and theme but the scene should be adding something necessary. If you can cut it and nothing changes, you should probably cut it.

Writing Action/Description

It’s hard to give advice on action/description lines because everyone has their own style. If you give people rules you’ll pretty easily be able to find a lot of great scripts written by pros that break those rules. But I’m going to try, with the caveat that these are not rules, they’re suggestions.

Remember that while your script is in a way a blueprint for filming the pilot, you’re primarily writing something for an audience of execs, producers, agents, managers, and of course all of those people’s assistants. So it should be fun to read! You can show personality in your action and description lines. You want your voice to come through.

That said, you’re not writing a novel. You generally want the action lines to read quickly and focus on what the reader needs to know to understand the story and what the characters are going through. You don’t want to have a lot of really thick paragraphs. I think of those as walls of text that readers will see as an obstacle.

Also, try write less of what the characters are thinking and more of what they’re doing. Express their feelings through their actions.

Honestly, the best way to learn this is to read a lot of scripts in your genre and see how the scenes are actually written out on the page, but don’t be afraid to express your style, within reason.

Writing Dialogue

Dialogue is one of the things that screenwriters struggle with most. You’ll often hear screenwriters say “all my characters sound alike” or “all my characters sound like me.”

Here are some thoughts that might help you:

1. Dialogue is an expression of a character’s unique background and personality

How your characters speak is going to be affected by their age, where they’re from, their education level, and other obvious biographical factors. But it goes deeper than that. Are they patient or impatient? Are they gentle or rough? Are they assertive or passive? Are they smart or dumb? Do they think quickly or more deliberatively? Are they cautious with their words or say the first thing that comes to mind? The more you think about what make your characters unique, the more they’ll sound unique. That’s why it’s so important to develop your characters and know them well.

2. Dialogue is a tool that your characters use to get what they want.

In scenes your characters should want something, and one of the main ways they try to get it is by using their words. So think of their dialogue as a tool they use. This can mean they’re trying to convince someone to do something, they’re trying to comfort someone, hurt them, impress them, woo them, or just get the other person to understand how they’re feeling. But they’re not just conveying information. They have an agenda.

3. People don’t always say what they mean

I’m talking about subtext. Think about how many times in your life you’ve said a bunch of words when all you really meant was “I’m mad” or “I’m happy.” You didn’t say you were mad or happy, that was subtext. The same thing happens with your characters. They use subtext to convey what they really mean if though their words aren’t directly saying that.

4. Contrast helps things stand out

If you want dialogue in a scene to sparkle, try using contrasting styles. For instance, if one character is long-winded, make the other character concise. Or if one character is super logical, try making the other more figurative. There are a million other ways you can use contrast, but contrast helps things stand out. If you have a bunch of dialogue that all is similar, it all will blur together and the reader will tune out.

Explore the Theme

As you’re revising, it can be easy to focus in on the specific words and lose sight of the bigger picture. Remember what it is that you’re trying to say in the pilot, and make sure that you actually say it. But of course you’re not writing a philosophical treatise, you’re telling a story. So you need to express your theme through the story you’re telling.

If you go all the way back to Lesson 1 you’ll remember we talked about philosophical conflict, and this is one of the ways you can put your theme in your story. To do this, express your theme as an argument or conflict between two different ways of looking at the world and have different characters who represent or advocate for different sides. Your theme is revealed by the actions your protagonist chooses, their consequences, and which side is proven right in the end.

Setting Up the Series Questions

Finally, remember that a pilot script is similar to a movie script in that they’re each telling a story, but they differ in that the pilot script is also setting up the entire show moving forward. So as you revise you need to make sure that your pilot script is setting up the series moving forward.

Think of this as the end of your pilot launching us into the season. You’ve answered one question in the pilot, but you’ve set up this bigger question moving forward. What that question is depends on your show, but your protagonist is facing some kind of problem that is going to keep happening to them in different ways.

This ties back into one of the first things we talked about in Lesson 1, the chronic conflict in your show. It should be clear by the end of the script what aspects of your show are going to keep causing problems for your characters, which is where your stories are going to come from.

Moving Forward

I’ve thrown a lot of ideas at you over the course of these six lessons, and writing a pilot is hard so you’ll probably feel overwhelmed or discouraged at times. But I want to encourage you to keep at it. Our writing abilities are not set in stone, and neither are our scripts. Both of them can improve over time through practice. Try not to get too hung up on whether your script is perfect. Instead focus on your growth as a writer, and try to fall in love with the writing process.

If you love writing and are growing as a writer, I call that success.