What Your Script's First Pages Are Doing Wrong

If you've ever sat through a script note session and thought, "I wish someone would just say what they mean," Scriptfella is your guy.

In this excerpt from one of his free live classes, screenwriting coach Dominic Morgan workshopped How's the Pain , a script by writer Garrick Hamm about a terminally ill hit woman who forms an unlikely connection on what turns out to be her final job.

The script's premise is definitely there, but the pages have problems, and they're pretty obvious pretty fast. And Morgan's notes on loglines, character introductions, sentence construction, and word economy apply to pretty much every script in some stage of development. Check it out here.

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Your Logline Needs a Handle

Morgan opens the class by workshopping a logline for a script about a terminally ill hit woman on a road trip.

His diagnosis is that the concept has potential, but the logline is too unfocused to be usable. I would call it a little meandering and clunky, too—"how not to die alone" is just not the best way to say the thing the writer is trying to say.

And as Morgan puts it, there's no "handle" to it, no single clear thing you could pass on to someone else in a sentence.

This is a core function of a logline. It's not just a summary; it's a transmission device and sales tool and has to communicate a lot. If you can't distill your premise into something someone else can repeat, the concept isn't landing.

Morgan suggests, for this one, finding the irony. An assassin who has spent her life ending others now has to face her own mortality. That's a unique engine. That's the handle.

If you're new around here, a logline is a one-to-two-sentence summary designed to make someone want to read your script. It does double duty as a structural diagnostic tool. If your story can't be summarized in 20 to 30 words, it often signals a story that hasn't been fully worked out.

Morgan's class is focused on live feedback, and what's useful here is watching him locate the irony in a premise that the writer hadn't quite crystallized yet.

Introduce Your Character at Their Most "Characterful"

Now you move to the opening pages themselves. Morgan's note on Simone's hotel room scene is to introduce your character at their "most characterful." He's not getting that here. The writer has given us location and wardrobe, but no strong spatial or character anchor.

He offers a specific note, which is to put her in a gilded chair, and you immediately get a better sense of who she is. The character's context becomes clear through one concrete image rather than a list of details.

We've made the same case about opening scenes. A great opening generates curiosity through specificity, not inventory. What's one detail that gives us everything about your character?

The difference between "elegance half lost in the gray monotone light of a sparse faceless room" and "Simone reclines in a gilded chair" is the difference between a purple description and a clear picture.

Don't try to get fancy. Remember, you're not writing a novel and trying to show off. You're trying to get information across as quickly and easily as possible.

The character is doing something here. In fact, she's doing a lot, almost too much, I would say. A clear throughline of the action kind of gets lost in all the details (reading, eating an apple, writing).

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I would also point out an issue with the line, "She adds a single faded red rose on top of the envelope." What envelope? Where did that come from? In all the details included in the first draft, an envelope somehow appeared from nowhere as if she was doing something with it. But we know that the rose is faded, which is unnecessary.

A way to get a "characterful" intro is to show your person in action, so I love that. But again, simplify so it's clear what the action actually is.

Cut "As" and "Begins To"

There are two specific construction problems Morgan names in the pages. The first is what he calls the "'as' disease," where writers describe two actions happening simultaneously. "She bites into an apple as she flicks over the newspaper."

His fix is to do it sequentially. One action, then the next. The reader's eye moves in a line.

The second is "begins to." She "begins to write." Look for those unnecessary phrases or "be" verbs and get rid of them. You don't need them. "Begins to" stalls the action and distances the reader from the scene.

So not, "She is writing." She writes. Not, "Starts to write." She writes!

Your scene's job is to move. These are small fixes with a cumulative effect. You can read it faster, and it feels more immediate.

The "Sugar Cube"

Morgan introduces a concept he calls the "sugar cube," or a single object or detail that reframes everything around it or makes the scene interesting in a new way. In Garrick's first page, it's the pink jump rope, which Simone pulls from a plastic wrapper and tests in her hands. But as written, it's introduced after, "From a plastic wrapper." Probably an unnecessary detail.

Morgan admits he read it twice before registering that it's a murder weapon. That delayed recognition is a small structural problem (the implication should land faster), but the object itself is doing exactly what a sugar cube should do, which is change the meaning of the scene without explanation.

The fix is construction. Let your noun lead the sentence. Don't make the reader parse through a clause to get to the thing.

The "Aaron Sorkin Test"

Morgan applies what he calls the "Aaron Sorkin Test" to Danny's first scene. In a strong scene, a character wants something, there are obstacles to achieving it, and the drama comes from watching how they overcome those obstacles, with character revealed through the choices they make. It's a brisk version of a framework that's been around screenwriting pedagogy for decades.

Applied to Danny's scene, it falls apart a little. We don't know what he wants. We see him tidying what looks like a sex den, check his watch, and flash forward. What's the story? This is just a series of actions.

Our guide on first pages asks the same question differently. What does this scene promise the reader about the next 100 pages? If there's no promise, there's no hook.

Obviously, there's a lot to consider when you open your screenplay, with every detail, beat, and action carrying weight. Don't rush through these moments, and don't be afraid to rework when things aren't clicking.