Amazing Screenwriting Technique The Reverse Method

Many screenwriters spends huge time and effort to make their screenplay flow effortlessly form beginning to the end but very few succeed. With this method you can easily accomplish an effortless flow in your screenplay.
Once the screenplay is written and the first draft is ready many screenwriters start polishing the stuff.
Polishing a script mostly means that you are making small changes on the script. Like maybe you will tweak the dialogues a bit, shorten some part or you might take away some dialogues totally to replace with an action. These polishing can only better a specific area of your film but what it cannot alter, is the basic flow of the script.
I am sure that you have experienced there are some movies that really flows beautifully taking you through the ups and downs of emotional graph to a satisfying end.
The screenwriters of these films are aware of one important thing that separates them from the rest. And that is how to construct the line of events in such a way that it remains coherent. Even If you have nice scenes and interesting dialogue but your script will not go pass the reader if it does not have the flow.
So how to figure out and test your script if it is coherent in continuity. Because it is the second most important thing you do after your first draft. Some screenplay writers use it before they right a single scene because it is huge time and frustration saver.
There are actually many techniques to do this but today I am going to discuss only the reverse method.
Here I would like tell you that if you are serious about screenplay writing then it is important to make a one time investment and buy a good screenplay writing software. You can choose either Final draft or Movie Magic Screenwriter. Both are really good but I will tell you why it is pertinent to our technique.
In the film when the scenes are connected what it simply means is: One Scene is leading to the next scene. Basically it means A happens and hence B happens and hence C happens. So how we can construct our screenplay in a way that every scene not only pushes the story forward but also smoothly takes us to the next scene?
This is exactly where the reverse method comes in. It is one of the most amazing tools pro’s use to shape their story structure.
The screenwriting softwares that I mentioned come with a feature where it will show the heading and first few lines of each scene. So it is like a snapshot of your entire screenplay and you can scroll down from the first scene to the last scene.
Now all you have to do is to start with the last scene and then ask yourself this question:
Does the last scene happen because of the previous scene? Does the previous scene raises a question that leads us to the next scene?
If the answer is no then you need to look at the previous scene. And ask why it is there? What purpose does it serve to the story?
If you ask this question to every scene in your screenplay you might be amazed that how many superfluous scenes are there. The scenes that are not pushing the story forward at the same time not adding anything to the telling of story. If the scene fails in both accounts then you need to get rid of them.
By doing this you will be trimming off all every scene that are not required. The result will be a taught, lean mean story structure that will effortlessly take your audience through the story.
So you start with the last scene and ask is the last scene exist because of the previous scene? The previous scene results because of the scene before that and so on.