Good Enough

It has been said in the past that the difference between an amateur writer and a professional is that the pro knows when to say “That’s good enough” about a piece of writing and turn it in. I think there’s still a lot of truth to that, or at least there’s a lot of truth to the inverse of it; that amateurs spend a lot of time being insecure about their work and often don’t know when to declare it finished and move onto something else.

Of course, no piece of writing is ever “finished”; however perfect you think something is, stick it in the drawer for a month and then take it out and you will find countless improvements that can be made.

And so what the professional is really able to do is to judge the point at which the piece is beyond improvement FOR THE MOMENT. That’s what “Good enough” really means; right now, this is as good as I can make it. Or at least, that is what it is supposed to mean.

The movie stars of yore (yore being the point before streaming took over and the industry stopped producing stars) were, and still are, often notorious for working a scene to death. Tom Cruise being the most obvious example; countless collaborators have related how he attacks a scene or a moment with “How can we make it better?” and won’t quit until that scene is as suspenseful/impactful/exciting as it can be. From my own experience, Will Smith does the same thing. I worked with Will on a script a few years ago and I learned a tremendous amount across months of calls, texts, zooms and voice messages about not letting a sequence or an idea go until it is doing the best job it can. It’s exhausting, but it’s the correct approach.

Increasingly today, though, “good enough” seems to be accompanied by a shrug. I suspect streaming is partly to blame because, absent audience feedback in the form of ticket sales, there’s really no real need to achieve anything beyond getting the movie made - you got a credit, you got paid (well). You’ll never know if the movie was a hit, it won’t be eligible for awards, it will appear on the service and then vanish from the main menu after a week. Why make it excellent when literally no one in the process is demanding excellence? You’re making content and, so long as it runs for two hours and has someone called Chris starring in it, good enough is good enough. Actually, not-quite-good-enough is mostly good enough too.

So why go the extra mile on a movie when that is not required? The only reason I can think of is the only reason that matters; professional pride. Your movie might be on a piece-of-shit streaming service, but why can’t it be the best movie on that piece-of-shit streaming service? When people pull out the stops, we get “Rebel Ridge” or “Hit Man” or “Mank”. The streaming medium isn’t intrinsically bad, it’s just that the streamers often don’t exercise any useful quality control, so you have to do that yourself. If you write to please execs, then you’re only ever going to be as good as their taste. If you’re trying to write the best thing you possibly can, then the sky is the limit, regardless of how people are viewing the finished movie.

So how do you ensure you’re doing the best job you possibly can? Well, your mileage may vary, but here are a few tips:

• Disregard “vomit” drafts. A standard piece of writing wisdom is that you should just write the thing, as fast as you can, without looking back. Get the whole thing down and then fix it later. My personal issue with this is that I find that when I have got to the end of something, I feel an overwhelming urge to hand it in. I figure an exec will give me notes and then we can go back and forth to fix the problems. But what if those execs don’t have great taste? What if they think what you have written is “good enough”? You get paid, the job is done, and your half-assed script is now out there, being read by directors and actors who think it, and by extension you, is a bit “meh”. Also, however lightly you think you are treading with this draft, however agile you imagine yourself to be, you bake in problems with "vomit" drafts; you get married to ideas that don't work and you think you'll fix them later and then you can't because you accidentally used the bad idea as the fulcrum for the entire thing. I will write "vomit" scenes, all the time, but never a whole draft.
• Fix as you go. Eric Roth, who has written more than his fair share of award-winning screenplays, starts on page 1 EVERY DAY. Each morning he starts at the beginning and proofs, refines and improves all the way through before he starts writing anything new. That means he is always building on increasingly solid foundations, and it means that when he gets to the end, most of the script has been worked and worked and worked. Be like Eric.
• Don’t write for execs. That’s not to throw shade on execs, but they are not the toughest audience your script will get because they have multiple projects in development and they don’t need them all to be great or to even to get made. If you need to write with someone in mind, imagine your dream actor or dream director reading this script. They are going to give it one go through before deciding whether to commit a year or more of their life to this thing. And there are at least a dozen other scripts vying for that spot. So imagine your favourite actor or film-maker opening your script. Are you embarrassed, or excited? If you’re not excited, your script isn’t good enough.
• When you spot a way to make it better, MAKE IT BETTER. This also goes if you have an early reader who maybe gives you a great note that is going to result in another month spent re-writing. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve heard writers acknowledge that a particular change would improve the script “But it’s a lot of work.” Well, what else are you doing? You have to rip up the second act and re-write it from scratch to make the script better? So do it. You think Tom Cruise is reading your script thinking “Well, I can see how this would have made it better, but it would have been a lot of work”?
  • As an accompaniment to the above, I have also heard writers agree with a “lot of work” note, and then say that they are going to send the version as is in to the studio, to see if they have the same note. Really? Does the note make the script better or not? If you believe it makes it better then you are now knowingly delivering an inferior version. Someone is going to read that version and there is a danger that they will NOT spot the potential fix, but will just get a vague sense that the script could have been better. Either that, or you send it to them with a note saying that there is a way to make it better but you haven't tried it yet. Either way, good luck with your career. Exec notes have an important role to play in the development process, because nothing is improvement-proof. But why not start that conversation with a script that has blown their socks off, not one that is already compromised before they've even opened it?

A great script may never get made, but it is an asset nonetheless. When people read a great script, they look to work with that writer, even if this particular movie wasn’t for them. The investment of time and effort will pay off.

Do bad scripts get made? Of course they do. Do bad scripts attract actors and directors? Yes. Do bad writers get paid millions of dollars for bad scripts? Absolutely. But that is not the business we are in. 99% of everything is shit, we are striving to create something in the remaining 1%. We want to write “All The President’s Men, not “Fountain of Youth”.

"Good enough" is a quest for excellence, for a personal best, not for perfection. Every script can be improved. Even when you deliver your best work, someone will spot a potential improvement that will make you kick yourself. That’s OK, that’s the process. But the script that leaves your desk has to be as good as you can make it right now.

Every scene, every piece of description, every line of dialogue has to be the best it can possibly be at this moment. Something isn’t quite coming across? Fix it. This character is not leaping off the page? Fix it. The hero isn’t quite working hard enough for what they want? Fix it. This scene is kind of a placeholder? Fix it. Fix and fix and fix until you can fix no more. Then, maybe, it’s good enough.