I do a lot of writing, particularly for the screen. My filmmaking friends recognise me as being pretty good at it, so they occasionally ask me for my opinion on something they’ve written, or something someone else has asked them to direct.

Twice already this year, friends have forwarded me bits of writing they have been offered which are, frankly, awful.

Being tone-deaf at dialogue is one thing, but dialogue polishes are fairly quick fixes. Structural and thematic problems are more difficult to fix.

The absolute worst thing that both pieces (one was a short script, the other a treatment for a feature) have in common was their resolute disinterest in adhering to the rules of spelling and grammar.

Now, for some, this may not seem like such a huge problem. As long as we understand what’s happening, what does it matter?

The problem is that, generally, if a writer takes such a careless and/or lackadaisical approach to the simple mechanics of language, it is often symptomatic of a further reaching carelessness. If you care about the story you’re telling, you should take the time to eliminate simple errors. Make sure that there is no room for ambiguity in your sentence construction; you want the reader to understand what you are saying. If you don’t care enough for that, why should I care about your story? In fact, neither story had anything to say about anything. They were not narrative, merely event.

I used the word “writer” before to describe the authors of these texts. That would be inaccurate. What makes someone a writer is not merely the act of writing, but the attitude which they take towards writing. A writer cares about what they are writing. A writer craves clarity. A writer wants to be understood.

The people who wrote these scripts were not writers. I don’t know what they were for sure, but a thought occurs to me: nobody ever calls themselves an “amateur writer”. You are either a writer or you are not. There is perhaps no better word for the way these things were written than “amateurish”.

David

- P.S. I’m not saying I expect all errors to be spotted and prevented; almost inevitably, one or two “their”s and “there”s will be transplanted, or “your” and “you’re”, or whatever. Mistakes happen and we can’t always catch them all. I’m talking about the chronic carelessness wherein almost every sentence contains multiple major errors. If you send someone some writing which you have not checked for errors beforehand, you are an asshole and you are wasting everybody’s time.