foreign language

I seriously doubt anyone who could sign a check would bother to read a poorly written "English is not my first language script," but stranger things have happened. That said, polishing ESL scripts could be my new cottage industry?!

Cream rises to the top.

If the story is AMAZING and she/he is a likeable, affable, confident individual - capable of working the networks and selling themselves, then they shouldn't worry about typos and grammar. 

Any half decent human being (there's a few left in the business) would allow for the fact that English is their second language.

I find that the lower down the line the reader is - the more picky and pedantic they are. The higher up the pecking order you go, the less they care.

They want stories and scripts they can produce.

Bad spelling doesnt matter when the camera's rolling.

All I can say is, if you're going to go after someone's spelling and grammar, yours better be perfect.

I've also learned (and proven) it doesn't matter.

It does make things harder. The story may be good etc, BUT if someone who has the power to option that script, they will not keep going back over and over again to try and figure out what the writer meant/wrote. I think Barry has a point that the writer should AT LEAST spell/grammar check. If they are going to dedicate time to writing a good story, then spelling and grammar should be carried out as well.

In reality, has anyone really read a 'GOOD' story which was appaling in spelling and grammar? Personally, I put it down because just seems that not enough effort has gone into completing the best written work.

While everyone should make the effort to proofread, there's the issue that, if someone struggles with spelling and grammar, they are unlikely to spot their own mistakes. That's before we even get into issues like second languages and dyslexia. It's like finding a colour blind person has failed to sort the reds from the greens and assuming they haven't tried.

It can easily become a "glass houses" argument too as there will always be someone more schooled on the issue. There's some real rabbit holes you can go down with grammar. As a result, most people draw the line right under themselves, chastising those who don't meet their own standard while dismissing the need for any improvement on their part.

As someone who really struggles in this area, I'm pleased to say it's never held me back with industry members but it cut off the competition/evaluation route for me.

In a highly competitive world awash with good, bad and terrible English language speculative scripts, why make it any harder than need be to get yourself discovered (also read optioned, produced, sold)?

Full Disclosure: My early childhood was spent in a semi-rural version of Camelot where people of modest means ate cornbread and spoke Ebonics, Geechee and Cracker. I’m dyslexic and didn’t learn to read until I was 12 years old. My questionable command of Standard American English was not acquired until later in life. I find scriptwriting difficult, challenging and rewarding.

The thing is, a lot of people with scripts full or errors are trying their hardest to maximize their options and the cost of proofreading is too much for them. They cannot see their own mistakes the same as someone with zero engineering training can't see the weakness in a building construction. We are at the mercy of our education and technical writing skills are a tough one to improve with practice being a slow way to learn.

What I can't abide by, given my own experience, is people being told typos are a deal breaker. They are a very subjective thing. I know of readers who have stated that are concerned when they read a script with zero errors as they feel the writer has spent too much time going over it.

In some ways you can't win. There's always the chance you'll run into a reader with the odds stacked against you.

There's also the issue that a perfectly written script can still have clumsy staccato prose that's laborious and devoid of personality. Those are by far the worst scripts to read through in my experience.

Oldie? As someone who's read your work before, I'd take a closer look at your own work. I'm sure you've improved greatly since you started, but you're nowhere close to being an experienced writer and your writing often needs just as much work as the "newbie" scripts that you critique. Which is fine, it doesn't mean that you can't be helpful just because you're still learning. But many of your critiques are extremely condescending and you make yourself out to be a seasoned pro, when you're CLEARLY nowhere close. That's why I think you get flack for it -- and it may also be because your writing isn't much better. I've seen you bash a "newbie" script before, telling him that his formatting was wrong when the formatting was fine. It's fine to help other writers, but you need to be aware of your own skill level, especially when a lot of your comments are along the lines of "Have you ever even read a script before???" and "What the hell was that???" and condescending comments like that. A lot of your comments don't sound like you're trying to be helpful, it sounds like you're trying to make yourself feel good by putting yourself above another writer. When, in actuality, you're probably on the same skill level as the "newbies" that you're trying to bestow your all-knowing wisdom upon.