5 Screenwriting Mistakes That Can Weaken Your Story

Every screenplay starts with an idea. But an idea alone won’t carry 100 pages. The truth is that even promising scripts can lose their grip through unclear motivations, unnecessary scenes, or dialogue that explains too much. The result is often a script that gets passed on. 

Look at the Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. It received 5,599 entries in 2023, but only about 5% advanced to the quarterfinals.

Not all of the remaining 95% failed to advance because the writers lacked talent. Some probably weren’t able to establish the basic building blocks of a compelling narrative. Maybe those scripts struggled with character development, story momentum, or structure. 

So, how can you do better? By understanding the screenwriting mistakes that can make your script lose momentum.

Here are five common ones:

Writing Without a Clear Story Direction

Having an interesting concept isn’t the same as having a story. Unfortunately, not every writer knows this. That’s why they start filling up pages without a destination in mind. But that’s not how screenplay writing works. 

Before you write a single scene, you need a basic direction. Who’s your protagonist? What’s their central problem? What are they trying to achieve? Without this foundation, your scenes will likely meander or not contribute much to the overall plot.

A logline can help. This is a one-sentence summary of your movie. It forces you to clarify the core conflict, and so is a good way to test if your idea actually has weight. 

Film Independent takes this kind of clarity seriously. Its 2024 Screenwriting Lab required applicants to submit a logline and synopsis, and the selected writers went on to develop six feature projects. 

The lesson here isn’t “outline everything.” It’s that some form of story direction can save you from discovering, on page 70, that you’ve been driving down the wrong road.

Giving Your Characters Unclear Goals

A character goal is the engine that drives your entire plot forward. Get it wrong, and your protagonist will feel passive and reactive.

But don’t turn this into a rigid rule because characters can have multiple goals. They can change their minds. They can have competing desires. Their goals can even change as the story develops.

But many writers fall into the trap of unclear goals when building a character. They restrict their protagonist to a single, linear trajectory, maybe forgetting that compelling scripts rely on shifting dynamics. If you’re having this kind of problem or struggling with flat character motivations, you may want to look at how seasoned writers navigate myths about story goals to create multi-dimensional narratives. 

As a film and scriptwriting resource, Fade2Stage emphasizes this point perfectly: “Goals drive intrigue, keep audiences invested, and make characters relatable because everyone wants something.”

The key to achieving the above is making your character’s wants understandable and dramatically useful.

Letting Dialogue Explain Everything

Good screenplay dialogue doesn’t simply deliver information. It reveals character, creates tension, and often says something different from what the character actually means. The opposite is a lazy style of writing often called “on-the-nose” dialogue, and it’s a huge weakness. 

The solution is subtext. Let characters avoid saying exactly what they mean. Use action, behavior, and visual storytelling to communicate information whenever you can. Look at these two sample dialogues below:

Weak: “I’m angry that you lied to me.”

Better: The character calmly puts the keys on the table and says, “You said you were working late.”

The second example clearly shows the emotion through action. It’s more visual and more engaging, and an approach that’s a well-established screenwriting principle. 

Chapter 12 of FADE IN: A Guide to Screenwriting Basics, published by the University of North Alabama’s Pressbooks platform, puts it well: Subtext is a great way to have your characters “dance” around each other and makes for great entertainment.

Keeping Scenes That Don’t Move the Story Forward

Every single scene in your screenplay must have a reason to be there. It has to reveal something important, create conflict, change a relationship, introduce information, or push a character closer to or farther from a goal.

But not every writer remembers this. In a 2024 study of movie scripts, researchers found that although screenplays contain a large number of scenes, only a fraction are important to understanding the overall narrative.

With that fact in mind, ask yourself: are all the scenes in your screenplay serving a tangible role? And no, every scene mustn’t involve an explosion, argument, or dramatic revelation. A quiet scene can work beautifully as long as it does something tangible for your story. This is where you have to be ruthless as a writer. How? By cutting any scene that merely repeats information or provides filler.

This leads back to our earlier point on character goals and why they matter. When you know what a character wants, you have a much easier time judging whether a scene is doing useful work or not.

Treating the First Draft as the Finished Screenplay

Your first draft is never your ready story. So, don’t finish and immediately assume it’s ready for the producers.

The truth? You’ll probably need several rewrites. This is when you start seeing the problems that weren’t obvious while you were writing. A scene that seemed important might turn out to be unnecessary. 

Dialogue may repeat information the audience already knows. A character’s motivation might feel muddy. The pacing may sag in the middle. You might even realize that one of your main characters has stopped driving the plot altogether.

Take expository dialogue. Producer and script consultant Wendy Kram points to it as one of the top reasons screenplays get rejected. Rewriting gives you a chance to spot those moments so you can fix them.

Screenwriting Mistakes at a Glance

Here’s a quick rundown of the five mistakes above and how to fix each one.

FAQs

Can a screenplay have more than one main character?

Yes. Ensemble screenplays can follow several central characters. The trick is to make sure each one’s role and relationships stay clear to the audience.

Does every scene need conflict?

Not necessarily. While every scene should serve a tangible purpose, it doesn’t always have to be explosive or confrontational. Something should change, develop, or come to light by the end of each one.

Should I follow every screenwriting rule?

No. These are simply guidelines that exist to help you write clearly. They’re not absolute laws. The best writers know the rules, but they also know which ones make sense to break and which ones are better left intact.

There you have it. These are the screenwriting mistakes that can affect your story. Of course, avoiding these mistakes doesn’t guarantee a great screenplay. But it will give your story stronger direction, which will make it stand out.

by Staff Writer

From our in-house editorial team.