A Monster Made of Many Parts
Drawing its name from Frankenstein’s monster, a ‘Franken-draft’ is a screenplay that is not the product of a singular vision, but is instead a patchwork of scenes, dialogue, and plot points from numerous writers, producers, and executives. It’s the common, often messy, result of the studio development process, where a script is passed from writer to writer, each adding or changing elements without a unified plan.
How a Franken-draft is Made
The creation of a Franken-draft is a gradual process of accretion and revision:
- Original Draft: The first writer turns in a script.
- Rewrite: The studio, not fully satisfied, hires a second writer for a rewrite. They may keep the first writer’s structure but change the dialogue.
- Polish/Punch-up: A third writer, known for comedy, is brought in to add jokes.
- Star/Director Pass: A major actor or the director may bring in their own preferred writer to tailor the script to their sensibilities.
- Studio Notes: Executives give notes, and sometimes their exact suggested lines are literally copied and pasted into the document.
The Telltale Signs
The result of this process is often a script with visible seams. The telltale signs of a Franken-draft include jarring shifts in tone, characters whose voices and personalities change from scene to scene, plotlines that are introduced and then abandoned, and a general lack of a cohesive theme or authorial voice. The job of conforming these disparate pieces into a single, consistently formatted document often falls to the long-suffering script coordinator.