Do As I Say, Not As I Do

So I'm reading a screenplay the other day, and I come across this immortal line of dialogue:

ABBY
He'll me what's on them go.

It's a classic case of not proofreading your screenplay when you send it to someone to read, and it's something of a running complaint of mine, because I get so many scripts to read with dumb, didn't-the-writer-read-through-this? mistakes throughout.

I don't care if it's just a rough draft, that you are sending to a friend to read. There shouldn't be stuff like this in it, that is just plain incoherent.

Unfortunately, the big problem here?

The script was mine.

Last weekend, I was a good boy. I printed out my rough draft of my supernatural thriller, and went through it page by page, reading it through, finding typos, making a few changes, spinning a scene in a new direction here and there.

Then I sat down, and typed up all the changes. And I was happy, because I finally had it to the point where I was ready to send it to friends to read, to see if the rewrite worked.

And I did, immediately, flushed with the success of a finished draft.

But I hadn't taken the time to proofread the changes. And that little brain fart snuck through.

"He'll me what's on them go". Jesus.

That's going on the wall, as a little reminder.

Proofread your scripts thoroughly before you send them out.