What Is the Worst Screenwriting Advice? (And What to Do Instead)

Every screenwriter has encountered a flood of writing advice, from online tutorials and social media threads to books and podcasts, all promising the keys to success. The challenge isn’t a lack of information, but learning how to navigate it all.

There’s a wealth of valuable guidance out there, and much of it comes from genuine passion and experience. But not every piece of advice is right for every writer, or for every stage of a career. Knowing how to evaluate and apply advice thoughtfully is one of the most important skills a screenwriter can develop.

With that in mind, let’s look at three popular pieces of screenwriting advice, and explore how to interpret them in ways that support your growth as a working writer.

There’s a popular belief out there that your first draft for a script should be a vomit draft - something written as quickly as possible, without any focus on structure, pacing, or character development. The goal of a vomit draft is to just “get it all out.”

And, yes, the intent is good. It’s meant to free you from perfectionism and fear. But here’s the problem - professional screenwriting doesn’t work that way. 

Professional screenwriters don’t have the luxury of time to “vomit” out a draft and then spend months cleaning it up and molding it into something worthwhile. In Hollywood, yes, writing is rewriting. But rewriting isn’t rebuilding. If your first draft is structurally broken, unfocused, or missing clear and concise direction, it’s not a rewrite - it’s a total reconstruction. 

When you’re a pro screenwriter writing under contract, there’s no time for that. When a studio or producer hires you to take on a writing assignment (the bread and butter of every pro screenwriter), they’re expecting a draft that is near production-ready by the time you hand it in. 

• There’s no time for them to receive a work-in-progress.
• There’s no time to allow a screenwriter months upon months to fix a draft.

For most contracts, you get anywhere from one month to two and a half months (tops) to finish a first draft. When you’re first starting out, it’s going to be more like a month for non-guild writing gigs.  

When a studio, network, streamer, or producer hires a screenwriter for an assignment, they’re paying for professional-level preparation, precision, and instincts. The types of screenwriters that have those traits are those who get hired. 

Writing without a plan may be freeing when you first start out. But it also trains bad habits. It teaches you to rely on intuition rather than discipline and planning.

You don’t need to write recklessly, as it pertains to writing a vomit draft as quickly as possible. You need to learn how to write efficiently. 

If you want to become a pro screenwriter, you need to train yourself to write like one. 

That means spending time developing your outline (more on that below), story, and characters before you sit down and type FADE IN.

• Know where your story begins.
• Know what emotional or thematic journey you’re taking the reader on.
• Know where your story ends. 

When you do that prep work, you can write faster because you’ve already considered, brainstormed, and made the hard decisions. 

It doesn’t mean you’re not given room for discovery. You can and will still be able to find and develop surprises along the way. But you’re doing it within the already-developed framework that supports your concept, story, and characters. 

Instead of writing a vomit draft, focus on writing a momentum draft that follows the development framework as you write with speed and focused intention. You’ll get the joy of discovery, but you’ll end up with a much stronger foundation that’s closer to a second or third draft than a hectic salvage mission of a first draft. 

This is a romanticized notion of storytelling; the idea that you should start page one with only a general premise and then let your imagination take over. The belief behind this advice is that if you plan too much, you’ll stifle spontaneity and lose your creative spark. 

It can certainly work when you’re writing a novel that generally has no limits when it comes to page counts, structure, scope, etc. But when you’re writing a screenplay, you’re developing a blueprint under a strict page-count expectation, with production limitations, story editing and scope limitations, etc.

The best screenwriters don’t just discover their stories. They design them. They understand that storytelling is architecture. Every setup, every payoff, every emotional beat is placed with purpose.

In screenwriting, when you try to “discover” where the story is going as you write, you’re flying blind. You may end up with fascinating scenes, but without a focused plan those scenes likely won’t connect in a way that creates a satisfying cinematic experience. 

Even worse, discovering while you’re writing, much like the vomit draft approach, can lead to endless rewriting. You’ll constantly find yourself changing earlier scenes to accommodate new ideas. 

You’ll quickly see that your tone, pacing, and plotting are inconsistent because with each writing session, you’re bringing in a different mentality, different approach, and different emotions, visuals, and moods every time you sit down to write. Why? Because you don’t have that initial framework from the front-end development that should be present before you type a single word. 

Screenwriting is about precision, not just expression. Film is a visual medium with a very tight and necessary structure - beginning, middle, and end - that must engage and keep the interest of the audience minute by minute.

If you don’t know where your story is headed, how can you effectively foreshadow what is to come? How can you build to key cinematic emotional and narrative payoffs?

Pro screenwriters plan. Period. 

Every screenwriting contract begins with an outline, consisting of a bulletpointed breakdown of sequential scenes from beginning to end, and almost everything in between. You may even be contracted to provide one before you start writing the script. 

Why? Because it allows creative and production-related collaboration before a script is ever written. Screenplays are like houses of cards. If you remove one element, the whole thing could tumble - or at least drastically affect the structure. 

So, outlines are used to figure out any potential story, character, scene, sequence, and production issues before the script is written. That way, the screenwriter can go into the writing process knowing what is expected, what has been agreed upon, and where/how moments of discovery can fit in along the way. 

Once you have that foundation, you can still allow and enjoy discovery - but within the bounds of that cinematic skeleton you and your development executives and producers have developed. 

Outlines aren’t the enemy of creativity. They are the backbone of strong scripts and outstanding movies. 

With Final Draft’s Beat Board and Outline Editor, you can seamlessly develop, visualize, and organize your story’s beats before writing them in script form. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you utilize this amazing tool.  

• Step 1: Open a New Project - Launch Final Draft and open a new script file. From the view menu at the top of the screen, select Show Beat Board to display your visual workspace for brainstorming.
• Step 2: Add Your Story Beats - Create beats by double-clicking anywhere on the beat board. Each beat represents a key story moment or scene. Title each beat clearly.
• Step 3: Expand Beats into Paragraphs - Each beat should have a short paragraph consisting of 2-5 sentences describing what is happening within each scene. This is where you flesh out your story logic and track character decisions. Think of this paragraph as the core of each beat/scene.
• Step 4: Send Beats to the Outline Editor - Drag and drop your beats from the Beat Board into one of the lanes of the Outline Editor at the top of the screen (if it’s missing, go to View > Show Outline Editor). You can also drag the ends of your beats to make them longer or shorter, and sync up with the projected page count of your script. 
• Step 5: Build Your Outline - In the Outline Editor, you can adjust the order of your beats/scenes, lengthen them, shorten them, or remove them, which creates a clean and linear story breakdown. Once you’re happy with your outline, click the square with the arrow beneath your outline lanes and click Send Outline to Script. You will now have a full text outline of your script on your script page, viewable by going to View > Page View. 

The great thing about this process is that it allows you to envision your story as it would be shot and edited for the screen, making it so much easier to write a cinematic screenplay. You can then allow for that story and character discovery to happen during this process. 

Then, when you go into the writing process of actually typing the script, you have the best possible compass to follow. And, yes, you can still add elements as you write. 

This process will help you not only write a better, focused, and well-paced script, but it will also help you to write faster so you can meet those tight deadlines.

From the late Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat to the late Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey (namely, Christopher Vogler’s interpretation of it for Hollywood movies), screenwriters have been given excellent screenwriting formulas to follow (Final Draft even has templates for many of these screenwriting methods). At first, these formulas (and many others found in screenwriting books, classes, seminars, and workshops) reverse-engineer successful cinematic stories and showcase consistent structures and elements that make great movies. Screenwriters can then use them as guidance for their own stories.  

These tools do work. But the key thing to remember is that they shouldn’t be viewed as secret formulas for success. Instead, they should be utilized as learning aids that teach you different ways to effectively tell a cinematic story. 

Formulas can be incredible for beginners to understand various forms of story structure. However, those formulas aren’t fool proof, and they are certainly not applicable across the board. For every hindsight example that follows a certain formula, there are a dozen more that don’t follow it, and with successful results.  

When you follow a beat sheet formula like it’s scripture, your script starts to read like everyone else’s doing the same. You hit every beat on every page cue listed in a formula, and your story starts to read and feel unoriginal, bland, and, well, formulaic. 

Executives, producers, reps, and readers can spot a Save the Cat script a mile away. They’ve read hundreds, if not thousands, of them over the years. And while the foundation might be solid, the story will often come across as lacking originality, surprise, or authenticity. Why? Because the screenwriter was too busy trying to hit the specific beats in paint-by-numbers fashion, forgetting that these formulas are only meant as general guidelines to follow. You still need to bring as much originality to the table as you can for the script to stand out. 

In short, following the guidance of a formula isn’t an exact science. You still need to bring your own nuances.  

The real craft - original voice, character depth, emotional catharsis, and originality - is what truly sets successful professionals apart, with the exception of studio or network assignments crafted to be formulaic by design to hit a specific niche audience. 

Read these books. Learn these formulas and structures. But don’t follow them to a tee. Instead, take a look at what pieces apply to your story and use them as needed. 

Structure your story in a way that feels natural to the narrative and characters you’re writing. If your midpoint lands on page 60 instead of 55, that’s okay as long as it works for your story. 

Pro screenwriters understand structure intuitively because they’ve internalized it. They’ve read and written enough scripts, and watched enough movies to know what works and what doesn’t. 

Your goal should never be to follow any single formula for success to a tee. It’s to master the craft so you don’t need to. Formulas give you some valuable tools to add to your mastercraft tool belt. 

All of this common advice comes from good intentions — the goal is to make screenwriting feel more approachable. The truth is, writing isn’t always easy. But it is something you can learn, especially if you focus less on shortcuts and more on building steady habits.

When you approach screenwriting like a professional - outlining, planning ahead, and writing with purpose - you’ll naturally set yourself apart from many writers who are still waiting for inspiration to strike. A disciplined mindset doesn’t just make you more productive; it helps you grow faster and write stronger scripts.