40 Things That Immediately Ruin A Movie As Pointed Out By Folks In This Online Group

You most probably had or have to write essays or stories during some of your lessons at school. And even if writing is one of your strengths, you know that the process can be tiresome and you are not always satisfied with the result. What may be even more frustrating is that you might not know how to fix it.

For most people, creative writing or pros and cons essays end when they finish school, but those who feel that their writing skills are better than average might choose it as their career path. They get to know how a good story is written and what it needs to be captivating and interesting, even though there will be people, like those on Reddit, who will find some of their ideas annoying.

Bored Panda reached out to a screenwriter to find out more about the process of writing a script. We got in touch with Juliet Giglio, a screenwriter who attended NYU Grad Film school and now is a screenwriting professor at SUNY Oswego.

She also works as a screenwriter with her husband Keith Giglio and worked on such films like Disney’s Tarzan, Pizza My Heart, Return to Halloweentown, Joshua, and A Cinderella Story. They also are publishing their first novel this year called The Summer Of Christmas.

We asked her what the screenwriting process looks like and what it all starts with. Juliet Giglio explained, “The process of screenwriting begins when you come up with the idea (the logline) and then begin fleshing out the story. This is typically done with index cards or using a program like trello.com that helps to organize the story. From there you create an outline (Google Docs works well). After you have a very fleshed-out outline and you know what will happen in all of the scenes, you can begin writing the script, using a screenplay software. Screenwriting is ALL about structure. It's 3 acts (with act 2 broken in half) and 8 sequences.”

Very often, when you watch movies, some unexplainable things that happen in the beginning of the movie are implicitly explained later on and you may wonder if that was planned from the start or if the screenwriter came up with it as they went along. Juliet Giglio told us that “You definitely need to know the ending of the script before you begin writing so that you know what you're going toward.”

The most challenging part of screenwriting, according to Giglio, is “Breaking the story and figuring out who the characters are is the most challenging and can take at least a month if done properly. Once the story is fully fleshed out, the actual writing of the script isn't as hard.”

You may think that maybe screenwriters shouldn’t take so much time developing a character because the actor will do that for them, but it is one of the biggest misconceptions about screenwriting and our expert says clearly that actors don’t make up their own dialogue. “Sure, there can be some improvisation on set, but typically actors stick to the lines because they know they work for their character.”

To conclude, we asked how Giglio herself would answer the question the redditor gave as we were quite interested to know what a professional thinks. She told us that for her, a movie is ruined “When the inciting incident is rushed. Before we can throw a problem at our hero, we need to get to know them first. See what their life is like if the movie never happens. If we don't fully grasp who the hero is, then we won't be as invested in the movie.”

Let us know what you think about the screenwriter’s insights and if anything surprised you. Also, did anyone mention the thing that makes you not want to rewatch a movie? Upvote the ones that you agree with and if nobody shares the same opinion as you, share it in the comments!