5 Ways to Analyze Your Writing Growth This Year

The end of the year always sneaks up on screenwriters. One day you’re starting a brand new script after an exciting start of a new year, and then the next thing you know, it’s December and you’re left wondering where the year went. 

But there’s a hidden gift in the closing of a new year. It's a natural moment to step back, take stock, and take a closer look at your progress as a screenwriter. Not how much you wish you had grown, but how much you genuinely developed as a cinematic storyteller, and how any progress or mistakes affected the business end of your screenwriting journey. 

Assessing yourself and your growth as a screenwriter in those respects isn’t about punishing or shaming yourself. It’s about identifying patterns, progress, and emerging strengths. It’s about spotting the wins that you may have overlooked, as well as pinpointing things you can work on to better yourself and your writing even more. It’s about acknowledging everything so you can head into a new year with focused intention rather than anxiety. 

These five areas will help give you a clear, honest, and empowering view of where you stand now, and where you’re capable of going in the near future. 

It’s time to count the scripts you complete during the year, and evaluate what you think the word “completed” entails. 

A screenwriter’s year can often get measured in pages and scripts. How many scripts did you write? One? Three? None? But the metrics to your answer doesn’t tell the full story of your growth. The deeper question is: “What does ‘finished’ mean to you now compared to last year?”

Early on in a screenwriter’s journey, finishing a draft - any draft - is a victory. But as you get deeper into your career, finishing a script means something much, much more. 

• Rewrites
• Deeper Character Work
• Dialogue Development
• Multiple Rounds of Feedback
• Polish Drafts

One of the biggest and most important things in a screenwriter’s life is creative momentum. Every script you write should enhance your sense of story, your voice, your instincts, and your overall craft. You should be getting better and better with each and every script. 

So, when you look at the final tally of finished scripts for the year, start to look at the craft within the count. A determined screenwriter can write 20 scripts in a year. However, if those scripts are collectively and objectively rushed and horrible, that’s not going to get you anywhere. 

Ask yourself:

• Did you conjure better concepts this year?
• Did your characters become more multi-dimensional?
• Did your scripts tighten and flow more cinematically?
• Are your “finished scripts” better than the ones from the previous year?

Every script should be a step forward. Learn from your mistakes and failures. Embrace your proven strengths. The distance of the steps taken matter far more than the number of steps you took. 

Most screenwriters don’t realize how important it is to track how long it takes to write a script. It’s not a race, but you do need to start learning how to write under Hollywood contract deadlines to better prepare yourself for a career in screenwriting. 

If your first draft took you six months to write the previous year and now you’re only taking three months to finish one, that’s an example of improved clarity, focus, and confidence. 

If you’re getting to the point where you can finish a first draft in one to two months, you’re on the right path as far as being able to handle the tough deadlines found in most pro screenwriting contracts. 

• You’re making story choices faster because you’re gaining confidence.
• You’re outlining more effectively because you understand the importance of doing the front-end development work.
• You’re rewriting as you go because your instincts are getting sharper, which will lead you to end up with a first draft that’s more like a great second or third draft. 

Screenwriting is a craft of cycles - idea, outline, draft, rewrite, polish. These cycles are actually part of pro contract payouts as well. You generally get paid a contract commencement fee (the idea via the pitch), then get paid for the outline (a key collaborative tool), first draft, and then ensuing drafts. 

Pro contracts lay out these payouts via stipulated deadlines. A couple weeks to write the outline. A month or two to write a first draft after the outline has been approved. A couple weeks for each rewrite. 

Growth for a screenwriter means getting yourself closer and closer to pro level abilities and capabilities. Most screenwriters focus on selling a script. While that is the goal of all screenwriters, the true bread and butter of a screenwriter’s career are assignments. Most spec scripts work as calling cards or samples to get hired to write scripts for a studio, network, streamer, or production company. The sooner you can get on a pro contract schedule with your screenwriting, the better. 

Ask yourself:

• Can I write faster?
• For the next year, how many scripts can I write to stack my deck for the following year?
• What can I do to write faster, and better, at the same time?

It’s not about speed - it’s about refining your creative engine to the point where, when hired, you’re a screenwriting machine, able to write not just fast, but amazingly well. 

Screenwriting contests and fellowships can be a tricky barometer for screenwriters. Many treat them as the only measure of success, thinking that winning or placing defines their quality of writing and their success. 

The real value of tracking your submissions is creating a strategy. 

• Did you target certain contests that align specifically with your genre?
• Are you entering every single contest you can find to place high and get some prize money (try to not let that be your goal)?
• Or are you wisely limiting your submissions to contests and fellowships that offer the most potential access to Hollywood (agents, managers, development executives, producers, etc.)?
• Did you take advantage of feedback or notes offerings?
• If so, what did you learn from that valuable feedback?

Some screenwriters enter as many contests as they can, putting all of their eggs in that basket, hoping to be discovered. Others only enter one or two of the most Hollywood-connected competitions - like Final Draft’s Big Break - looking to take advantage of the bigger Hollywood connections while also focusing on their own script marketing campaigns through networking and cold-querying. 

Point being, have a strategy for how many submissions you make throughout the year, and which screenwriting contests and fellowships offer the most Hollywood access. 

Growth as a screenwriter isn’t just about learning how to write better stories, develop better characters, conjure more enticing concepts, or edit tighter screenplays. The business-end of things matters. If you don’t get your scripts into the hands of Hollywood decision-makers - or reps who can get them into those hands - you won’t be able to see this screenwriting dream through. 

The sole act of sending a query already shows progress because it requires courage, professionalism, and belief in your work. 

What’s now more important after that first step is analyzing your approach. 

• What query content led to the most responses?
• What query content led to silence?
• What query content led to submission requests?
• What query content led to rejection?

You can then analyze additional elements like:

• Who did you query?
• Did you query agents, managers, development execs, or producers?
• Of those, who averaged the most responses, and who didn’t respond at all?

Screenwriters get better at querying the same way they get better at screenwriting - through trial and error, adjustment, adaptation, and growth. You begin to understand what loglines resonate. You learn which email subject lines get ignored. You discover which tone (professional, casual, or a hybrid of both) works best. 

Be sure to remember:

• Queries should be short, sweet, and to the point.
• Get to the logline as quickly as possible.
• Limit things to one logline, as opposed to sending multiples.

Read:  How Screenwriters Can Master the Cold Query

This question isn’t about beating yourself up. It’s about finding clarity from one year, and focus for the next. Asking yourself this question ensures that growth is not something you look back on passively, but something you actively create. And the great thing about this is that you can focus on what you want and need in your screenwriting year to come. 

• Maybe you want to challenge yourself and finish more scripts.
• Maybe you want to slow down and focus on writing better ones.
• Maybe you want to query with more strategy.
• Maybe you want to be more disciplined.
• Maybe you want to tackle that one script you’ve been too scared to try.
• Maybe you want to take a risk. 

Screenwriting growth is rarely about giant leaps. It’s usually more about small, intentional adjustments that eventually stack into majorly impactful shifts in your career. 

Growth isn’t accidental. Growth is a decision. And you come to decisions on how to approach the future of your screenwriting path by analyzing what you’ve done in the past. Hindsight is always 20/20. Use that to better yourself and your screenwriting. 

You’ve already grown more than you realize. You’ve lived more life. You’ve analyzed your writing. Your instincts have sharpened because you’ve stuck with it this far. 

You are exactly where you are supposed to be in life, and in your screenwriting career. Never forget that. But also never be complacent. Complacency is the killer of many screenwriting dreams. Each year, you need to be learning from your mistakes, taking advantage of your triumphs, and pushing yourself further and further until Hollywood finally takes notice. 

Learn how to plan your entire screenwriting year in this month-to-month guide.