Repeated Words and Alliteration

Clearly, the Wave-inatrix reads a lot of scripts. A lot. At least one full feature on a daily basis, and very often, two. When I read your script, I have a huge advantage over you - I've never seen it before. When you've spent that much time with your pages, it's hard to see the forest for the trees after awhile. That's where I come in.

If you use the word "angry" or any version of it on your pages more than once, I see it. It's like that scene in A BEAUTIFUL MIND when Russell Crowe sees all the patterns in the numbers. It's like I put 3-D glasses on and suddenly everything that is not working comes into full view. If a writer needs to work on the flaw of their main character, or has a typo here or there - I have no judgment about that. My job is point it out and help fix it. But, as Wavers know very well by now, when I catch something that the writer overlooked, I get a little nuts. Like typos, malaprops and just plain laziness.

Here's a quick, made-up but scarily accurate example:

INT. BEDROOM - DAY

Quietly, Jim pulls back the covers and goes to the window. All is quiet outside.

SHERRY: Jim, what are you doing?
JIM: Shhhh, be quiet.

Okay so here we have "quiet" used three times in short order. Hello? Make like an Eskimo and come up with other words to describe that it's quiet.

I might be reading a page and notice the word "she" used maybe ten times in one page. Or "they", or "damn" - doesn't matter what the words are but it's lazy writing to repeat the same words over and over. Words on your script pages are like pointillist paintings; you are going for this larger image of beauty, but that image is made up of tiny dots. And when the tiny dots are spelled wrong, repetitive or my personal favorite - malaprops, the larger image has a hard time arising from them.

Now. Is this something that falls under the screenwriting priority list of theme, character arc or the originality of your premise? No. Your words won't be seen onscreen at all, so in the end, using "quiet" six times on a page doesn't matter. Or does it?

Alliterative words are defined technically, as words with the same consonant sound: She sold seashells at the seashore, or Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers. But in the sense I use it here, it simply means words that sound an awful lot alike and therefore make the read slightly clumsy.

Think twice before naming your female ensemble characters Sharon, Susan, Cindy, Sookie and Sally. Because I am going to get them all confused. They sound too much alike. I recently read this: a stray ray of sunshine blah blah blah. Stray and ray. Back to back.

Much has been made of the multitudinous and egregious spelling errors in Tarrantino's INGLORIOUS BASTARDS. Spelled Inglourious Basterds on the copy that I have. Must we really pause here to point out that this is an established, and some would say, very gifted director and so he gets a free pass where you don't? Okay. I said it.

When someone reads your script, you are not only not preceded by a reputation for greatness, coolness, celebrity-ness or artistry - you are actually preceded by loads and loads of really bad scripts. So the assumption is, on page one, that this script probably won't be very good. Because you're one of the hoi polloi. Guilty by association.

So this is your shot. Don't blow it. Don't give them the satisfaction. Scan your pages for alliterative words and names, for typos (god knows) and vis a vis today's lesson - repeated words. Use a highlighter and go through your pages - have you unwittingly used a word over and over again? Get rid of those repetitive words. Stand out from the crowd with stellar pages which represent a stellar script.

As we duke it out over the final, final, top scripts in the Silver Screenwriting Competition (and there's been some um, lively duking-it-out, trust me) not one of the scripts in question has typos, repeated words or malaprops. Not a one. Otherwise they would have been knocked out in an earlier round. We want the best of the best. You need to do anything and everything to be sure you fall under that category and what may feel like a silly chore - making sure you don't use "they" ten times on one page is actually not silly at all.

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