An adjunct to this rule of bad dialogue is "Show, Don't Tell," another of the most frequent mistakes found in newbie screenplays. You can say more about a relationship in trouble by seeing a husband eye a pretty young thing as he and his wife are walking down the street than by three pages of dialogue about how their marriage counseling sessions are going. Movies are stories told in pictures. So why would you resort to telling us when you can show us? It's so much more economical! You want to make sure the audience knows about a guy's N.Y. Giants past? Show team pictures on the wall of his apartment, give him a limp (from the accident that ended his career, but only if it's germane), sneak it in with subtle references. Want to make sure we know a fight has occurred between two people? Have them talk about anything but the fight. If handled right, the audience will get it. They're a lot more perceptive than you think.

Whether it's a comedy or a drama, wringing out the emotions of the audience is the name of the game. Making it an emotional experience, using all the emotions, is what it's about. Think why that is. We go to the movies not only to escape reality, and to ultimately learn a little lesson about Life, but to experience a dream state where Life and its attendant emotions are recreated in a safe environment. Like a good dream, we must live the movie; we must run in place along with the hero in our sleep, clutch our pillows at the love scene, and hide under the covers during the breathtaking climax of the film to wake exhausted but fulfilled, wrung out, worked out, and satisfied.

But this can also go for little fixes of minor characters or subplots in a script that's not working. Are these characters motivated by primal drives? It 's another way of saying: Are these characters acting like recognizable human beings? At their core, they must be. Or else you are not addressing primal issues.

Let's say you have a high-falutin' concept: stockbrokers rigging the international bond market. Fine. All very interesting. But at its core, no matter what the plot is, by making each character's desire more primal, that plot is grounded in a reality that everyone can understand — suddenly it's not about stockbrokers, it's about human beings trying to survive.