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SO YOU'VE WRITTEN your script enough times to know that that bad boy is absolutely, undeniably, irrefutably done. But before sending it out, wouldn't it be nice to feel confidant that it's actually good? What constitutes "good" by your definitions, however, is where the problem may lay.

Here's why: Two Bombers have been found guilty. They are shackled to a car parked in the middle of a field. An authority informs them that there's a bomb in the trunk. The bomb has a timer that will detonate at an undisclosed time. It may be five minutes. It may be five hours. That the duo must wait it out, never sure if their next breath will be their last, is justice. What do they talk about? What do they do? How do they act? You have six pages to tell us. Go write the script.

Compelling stuff, eh? I'd say the kinda stuff that makes for a potentially good script. The thing is, if you pool together 10 screenwriters in a room and assign them all the above scenario, what you will find when they're done are 10 very different scripts. I know. I've done it.

Although most of the scripts will share the same basic story and plot points, many will be distinguished for what they fail to communicate to the reader. Many by all that they do. I don't mean simply the necessary information, i.e. that these people are being punished and the way in which they are, but the texture lurking beneath their faces and dynamics of interaction between them and the scene. And the potential.

Some of the writers will exploit only the obvious--bad guys (maybe gals) crackin' wise in response to the situation while others strive to extricate an entirely fresh spin, rife with conflict initially unrecognized. For instance, the bombers might be a married couple, or homosexual, or kids, or, in fact, innocent. Maybe one is innocent and one is not. Maybe they're decent people who became vigilantes and blew up a crack house in their neighborhood after their kid over-dosed. Just maybe...

And while the entirety of most of the scripts will no doubt be spent on a gab-fest inside the car (which, with crisp, biting dialogue, may be great), other writers will elicit the reactions of law enforcement and victims' relatives spectating the event. Others might choose to defy the apparent genre and tell it as a comedy or love story. And still others might approach it as an agenda piece--seeking to merely espouse some social or political statement.

A quick aside about the overt "agenda" approach. You want to send a message. Write a fax.

Thing is there are simply so many ways to write a story that it sometimes becomes difficult deciding what story you're telling. Speaking for myself, I sometimes get into such a panic over protracted scenes of conversation that I have to break off and away for fear of boring the audience. A good move? Not always. Sometimes the story mandates sticking around and working out engaging dialogue so that the reader never notices just how much there actually is. Ultimately, it's you, the writer, who dictates what the requirements of the story are.

Bottom line once you've done this is determining whether or not you've adequately communicated all of this to your audience. What must be kept in mind at all times is that the audience, a.k.a. reader/agent/producer/actor etc. may have completely different views on how best this story must be told. And topping this is the manner in which the story's been executed, i.e. the writing itself. The best that you can hope for is that, while searching for some semblance of confidence in the quality of your script, you've not omitted anything that will befuddle your audience so severely during the read (causing them to stop reading and forget about the script), or included anything that, if stripped from the page, would never be missed.

Which brings me to screenwriting workshops. For many years I was not fond of screenwriting workshops, and for very good reason. They were a waste of my precious time. I've since re-evaluated that assessment. Next month, I'll tell you why as we continue our search for what is "good" and how to tell.

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