These 3 Words Are the Telltale Sign of a Rubbish Script

By Ben Yagoda. There are actually, in my experience, two giveaways for crummy screenplays or teleplays. The first is the extent to which characters address each other by name. If  you’re writing dialogue with no ear for actual speech, it sort of makes sense to put down lines like “This isn’t about the money, Brian,” or “I long to see you, Ellen,” or “Let’s get one thing straight, Henry,” but that’s not the way real people talk. More...