Preparing Your Screenplay for Professional Industry Review
Before submitting your work, we strongly recommend reading this guide. It will help you present your screenplay in the clearest, most professional way possible and avoid many of the common mistakes that prevent otherwise promising projects from progressing.
This guide explains what industry readers expect and how to prepare your screenplay before submission.
One of the biggest mistakes made by new screenwriters is writing prose instead of writing for the screen.
A screenplay is a production blueprint. Every word should help the reader imagine what will appear on screen.
Avoid explaining what characters think or feel. Instead, show those emotions through behaviour, dialogue and action.
❌ Instead of:
"He feels overwhelmed by regret."
✅ Try:
"He reaches for the photograph, then quietly places it face down."
The audience understands the emotion without being told.
Film communicates through images and sound, not internal narration.
Always ask yourself two questions before every line of description:
If the answer to both is no, rewrite it.
Professional screenplays are economical. Almost every first draft can lose twenty to thirty percent of its words without losing any story.
During editing, ask yourself these four questions:
If the answer is no, remove it.
Readers notice concise writing.
Beautiful prose does not necessarily make a better screenplay. Avoid descriptions that call attention to themselves.
Your goal is clarity, not decoration.
❌ Colourful but unhelpful:
"She wears an aggressively ironed shirt."
This is colourful writing but tells us little that is useful for production.
✅ Simple and stronger:
"She wears a sharply pressed white shirt."
Or remove the description entirely unless it affects the story.
Avoid writing emotions. Write behaviour. The audience will understand.
❌ Telling:
"She feels nervous."
✅ Showing:
"She checks her watch for the fourth time and wipes her hands on her jacket."
Unless essential to the storytelling, write what happens, not how it should be filmed. Professional directors and actors will interpret the material themselves.
Avoid unnecessary:
Readers quickly notice repeated writing habits. These are not forbidden, they simply lose impact when overused. Every action should have a purpose.
Look carefully for repeated use of:
Pauses
Beats
Sighs
Long looks
Silence
Characters staring at one another
Repeated physical reactions
Unnecessary adjectives
Unnecessary adverbs
This is one of the simplest ways to improve any screenplay. Many new writers begin scenes too early and finish them too late. Films rarely show conversations from beginning to end.
Ask yourself:
Could this scene begin thirty seconds later?
Could it finish thirty seconds earlier?
Every scene should arrive at the point.
Avoid:
Greetings
Routine introductions
Unnecessary arrivals
Lengthy farewells
Conversations that continue after the audience already understands.
Every scene should achieve at least one important purpose.
If a scene achieves none of these, ask whether it belongs in the screenplay.
Professional presentation matters. Always use recognised screenplay software. Do not format a screenplay manually using Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
These applications automatically format: scene headings, dialogue, character names, margins, and page numbering. Correct formatting allows industry professionals to read your screenplay efficiently.
Windows, Mac and Browser
Windows, Mac and Linux
Mac
Free version available
Free version available
A checklist.
Readers want to discover great stories. Help them.
Don't make them edit your screenplay while they are reading it. The easier your screenplay is to read, the easier it becomes to appreciate your ideas, your characters and your voice.
Professional readers should spend their time evaluating your story, not correcting your pages.
Explore more resources from Solaire PitchUp.
A focused self-assessment to help you determine whether your project is ready to be pitched to industry professionals.
A step-by-step guide to assembling the documents, decks, and assets you'll need before approaching producers or financiers.
An interactive tool that evaluates your project across key criteria and gives you a readiness score before you submit.
Meet the team behind Solaire PitchUp and learn about the platform's mission to support emerging screen storytellers.