So, you’ve written a screenplay. You feel it’s as good as it can be. Your Mum loves it. Maybe even the odd film-buff friend has proclaimed it a work of genius. So you send it to an agent, only to find that it joins the work of thousands of other disappointed writers on the reject pile.

There are, frankly, more than a hundred reasons a screenplay doesn’t get produced.  Perhaps the reader had a hangover, or a lover’s tiff, or perhaps a similar script was optioned just the week before. Whatever the reason, when bad luck isn’t to blame for a script’s failure to crack the market, you may just want to consider reading Your Screenplay Sucks, by William M. Akers.

Akers knows scripts. He has written both TV and film scripts for MGM, Disney and Universal Studios, and he has taught screenwriting at Vanderbilt University for the past seven years. He has read thousands of them.  His passion for the form comes through on every page. And his passion also comes through when he is telling the reader how NOT to do it.

Perhaps the selling point of the book is the authoritative checklist of ‘Screenwriting don’ts’ that it highlights, a comprehensive and easily referenced checklist that offers a host of potential pitfalls that may have caused the reader to give up prematurely. The usual suspects are of course there; elements of structure, character, tone and pace are discussed in detail. However, Akers takes this list to an almost obsessive level. Stationery basics, cover letters and even a lengthy discourse on character names are just a few of the components of his checklist.

Akers doesn’t just tell you what not to do, however. He also makes plenty of suggestions: Have you given your bad guy a speech? Are there enough reversals in your screenplay? A killer first page? He does his best to ensure that all bases are covered when it comes to the Herculean task of getting your script read past the first ten pages.

This book is not for the auteur. It is not interested in independent, foreign or experimental film scripts and doesn’t try to be. It is for people who want to make a living selling scripts to Hollywood, people who can stomach advice such as “sign the release and hope for the best” when it comes to their baby.

However, the beauty of Your Screenplay Sucks is that it doesn’t try to be groundbreaking; it just pulls together a painstakingly detailed checklist that can be referenced before, during and after the writing process. Some of it is head-smackingly obvious, and some of it is ingenious in its simplicity, but that’s the point: Akers doesn’t just know scripts—he knows writers. He knows that the fastest way to sabotage a script’s chance of success is to send it out before it’s complete, and for the sake of trigger-fingered writers everywhere, he will do his damnedest to ensure that all bases are covered to prevent that from happening. ■