Three Steps To Script-Editing Success
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nueva_madreThree Steps To Script-Editing Success
Uploaded by
nueva_madreThree Steps to Script-Editing Success
Monday 6 February 2017, 14:18
Philip Shelley
Script Editor, Consultant and Producer
Tagged with: script editing
COMMENTS
I’ve worked extensively as a script editor, both in production and development. Rather than going into the nuts and
bolts of what a script editor does, here are some thoughts about the qualities you need to make it as a script editor.
As a script editor, your currency is based on several factors:-
Philip Shelley leading a masterclass
1. An understanding and appreciation of the craft of story-telling and
screenwriting.
As script editors, we need to be interested to the point of being obsessed about STORY, how it works, and thinking
about what it is that makes the good stories good.
In my experience most meetings with writers start off with the foreplay of discussing what you’ve been watching on
TV the previous evening, what you’ve seen recently at the cinema, the theatre, or on Netflix. This often leads to
bonding over how wonderful / horrible the latest TV show is, and why – before getting down to consummating your
relationship with the negotiation of script notes (OK, that’s enough of the sex analogy).
You’ll find that one of the things nearly all of the most successful TV dramatists have in common is a voracious
viewing appetite. Quite a few writers and script editors will pride themselves on watching all new TV drama (or at
least the first episode). As the range of TV drama on offer increases almost monthly, this gets harder and harder. But
everything you watch will teach you something and make you think about how story-telling works at its best.
We need to be watching everything – on TV but also on other platforms and in other media – theatre, film, online,
documentaries (so many of the best documentaries use similar narrative tricks and techniques to the best drama,
and there is so much to be learnt by fiction story-tellers from documentary film-makers – and vice versa), short films,
novels, news stories.
Are script editors also screenwriters? Sometimes - but very often not. Some of the best script editors I know have no
pretensions to be able to write themselves. BUT I do think it’s really valuable for script editors to try writing – even if
it’s only to experience first-hand the exquisite pain of someone carelessly but accurately ripping your script
(metaphorically) to shreds in front of you. The experience will be embedded in your psyche and will teach you to treat
the writers with whom you work with respect and sensitivity – writers are brave!
June Brown and Penelope Keith in Margery and Gladys, Produced by Philip Shelley
2. Ideas
Story ideas are a major part of a script editor’s currency – whether you’re working on a long-running series, or in
development.
The producers you’re working for will be constantly looking to you for a never-ending stream of cutting-edge, sellable
stories. So script editors need to think like writers in the way they generate ideas. As script editors, we need to be
constantly looking outwards at all of the extraordinary, amazing, horrifying things that are happening around us – this
is where stories come from (not from sitting staring at your computer screen!). We need to be people-watching and
stealing / borrowing ideas from wherever we can find them – and taking these ideas to writers and producers.
Waking the Dead, TREVOR EVE as Boyd ,HOLLY AIRD as Frankie, SUE JOHNSTON as Grace, CLAIRE GOOSE
as Mel and WIL JOHNSON as Spencer (Script Editor: Philip Shelley)
