ABSTRACT
Good writing is rewriting. But how does a writer know when they’re actually improving their material as opposed to making arbitrary changes for the sake of making changes? Every element of a screenplay presents a series of decisions, and a sensible revision process is a re-examination of those decisions. Usually revisions are required when the writer realizes they’ve failed to include some crucial piece of information relating to the characters or their situation. Backstory, the relevant history of the lead character or characters, is often where writers find themselves struggling because movies and TV shows are almost always creatures of the immediate moment. In this chapter, we will analyze the feature Spare Parts and an episode of Monk to see how backstory can be poorly or successfully utilized. We will also consider the dreaded production rewrite as we focus on the production history of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Finally, we will examine how a writer may successfully navigate the often difficult and contradictory process of taking notes.
