Quick answer: The formatting is correct. The story information is all there. And the pages still read as a description of events rather than the events themselves. Here are the four structural reasons that happens — and what each fix looks like on the page.
You can read a screenplay and know exactly what happened in every scene, understand the plot completely, follow the character arcs — and still feel nothing. That's the summary problem. The pages delivered the information. They didn't produce an experience. And the four reasons they didn't are identifiable, teachable, and fixable in the rewrite.
These failures appear consistently in AI-generated scripts and in early drafts written by writers who know their story well but are still learning to dramatise rather than describe. They're not about formatting — a script with perfect slug lines and proper margins can still read as a summary. They're about craft decisions that happen at the sentence level, in each action block and dialogue exchange.
Four Craft Failures — and What the Fix Looks Like
1
Action lines report emotion instead of showing behaviour
"John feels angry." "Sarah looks nervous." "Marcus is relieved." These sentences tell the reader what to feel about a character rather than showing the behaviour from which the reader draws their own conclusion. They're efficient — they convey the information in a few words — but efficiency isn't the goal of dramatic writing. The reader processing "John feels angry" is doing exactly that: processing a report. The reader watching John pick up a coffee cup, set it down, pick it up again, and then very carefully put it back without drinking from it — that reader is drawing their own conclusion from observable behaviour, and the experience of drawing a conclusion is different from the experience of receiving one.
The fix — before and after
✗ Reports emotion
Sarah feels nervous as she waits for the results. She's been dreading this moment for weeks.
✓ Shows behaviour
Sarah checks her phone. No new messages. She checks it again. Puts it face-down on the table. Picks it up. Checks it again.
The second version contains no emotion word. The emotion is produced entirely by behaviour the reader can see — the specific, compulsive checking that anyone who's waited for something important recognises from the inside.
2
Dialogue says what characters mean
"I don't know if I can trust you anymore." "I've always cared about you more than you know." "I'm not ready to forgive you." These lines deliver the scene's emotional content directly. They're accurate — they state exactly what the character feels — and they produce no effect, because the gap between what people say and what they mean is where dramatic tension lives. When characters say exactly what they mean, there's no tension to read through. The scene is transparent, which means it's flat. Subtext is not a stylistic preference; it's the mechanism that makes a scene function as drama rather than as exposition.
The fix
Ask what the character would actually say in this situation — not what they mean, but what they'd say instead of saying what they mean. People in conflict ask questions. They change the subject. They talk about something irrelevant. They say the opposite of what they feel and mean the original thing. "I don't know if I can trust you anymore" becomes "So. How was your weekend?" — said with a specific delivery that makes the question the most frightening thing in the scene, because both characters know exactly what it means.
3
Scenes resolve instead of turning
A scene resolution wraps up what just happened and returns the characters to equilibrium. A scene turn changes the direction of what the next scene will be. Most AI-generated scripts and many first drafts end scenes with resolutions — the argument concludes, the meeting ends, the characters part on a note that summarises what just occurred. That closure is comfortable for the writer and deadening for the reader. The last image or line of a scene should change something — shift the power, reveal information, create a new problem, raise the stakes — so that the next scene begins in a different place than the previous one ended. Scenes that resolve don't do that. They just stop.
The fix
Before writing the scene, name the turn: the specific moment where the scene's direction changes and the next scene becomes inevitable. Then write toward it rather than away from it. The scene's last line or image should be the turn, not a summary of the scene. If the last line of your scene could be cut without changing what the next scene needs to know, cut it — you've probably written past the turn into a resolution that wasn't needed.
4
Characters do exactly what the plot requires, in order
In real life, people pursue their wants through indirection, misdirection, and the specific friction of not wanting to reveal what they want. In summary-mode scripts, characters do what the plot needs them to do, when it needs them to do it, in a sequence that makes the story's mechanics visible. Character A says the thing that sets up Character B's response. Character B responds in the way that allows Character A to make the decision the scene requires. Everything is efficient and nothing is alive. Behaviour that exists entirely to serve the plot's needs doesn't reveal character — it reveals the plot. And a story whose mechanics are visible is a story the reader is watching being assembled rather than experiencing.
The fix
Ask what each character wants in this scene — not what the plot needs them to want, but what their specific psychology would produce as a want given where they are in the story. Then let them pursue it through the scene's specific circumstances, including the parts of those circumstances that resist their want. Characters who encounter friction, who try the wrong approach first, who almost get what they want before the scene turns — those characters feel real because their behaviour isn't perfectly calibrated to plot requirements.
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What all four have in common
Every summary-mode failure above is a choice to deliver information efficiently rather than to produce an experience dramatically. The fix in each case is the same: give the reader something to interpret rather than something to receive — behaviour rather than emotion labels, subtext rather than meaning, turns rather than resolutions, friction rather than efficiency.
Why This Is Hard for AI — and What Structural Context Changes
Generic AI produces summary-mode scripts reliably because the summary mode is what description looks like — and description is what AI does well. The shift from description to dramatisation requires something generic AI doesn't have: a clear model of what each character wants and is hiding, an understanding of where the scene needs to turn and why, and knowledge of what contemporary professional action writing looks like in the specific genre being written.
Dramatisation is not better description. It is a different task — one that requires knowing the dramatic context before the first action line, not discovering it in the writing.
The four fixes above are available in the next scene you write or rewrite, without any tool. Read your action lines and ask: am I reporting emotion or showing behaviour? Read your dialogue and ask: are my characters saying what they mean? Read your scene endings and ask: does this resolve or turn? Read each character's choices and ask: is this behaviour or plot service? Every "yes" to the first part of each question identifies a specific rewrite.
The harder part is working with a starting point that's already structured correctly — where the dramatic context is established before the writing begins. That's what the NovaKit Screenplay skill produces: scenes with the structural logic in place, the subtext built into the dialogue, the turn identified and written toward, and the action writing doing the work of behaviour rather than the work of emotion labels. The four failures above are what the skill specifically avoids — not as a stylistic preference but as the craft decisions that determine whether a page produces an experience or delivers a report.
NovaKit Skill
Screenplay / Script — dramatised scenes from the first action line
Behaviour not emotion labels. Subtext not stated meaning. Turns not resolutions. Contemporary format throughout. Works inside Claude.
A script that reads like a summary isn't a bad story. It's a good story that hasn't been dramatised yet. The information is right. The sequence is right. The emotional logic is right. What's missing is the craft translation — the decisions about what to show instead of tell, what to leave unsaid, where to turn instead of resolve. Those decisions are available on the rewrite. They just have to be the right decisions, which requires knowing what they are.
The next piece most people tackle from here is a book cover brief that works before the title is read.