After twenty odd years teaching screenwriting and reading screenplays I think I can speak with some authority about the most common mistakes made by beginning screenwriters.
overuse of camera direction
There's something seductive to the new writer in the many overused conventions of screenwriting. It's tempting to try and direct the film on the page, using CLOSE UP and ANGLE ON and DOLLY and PULL BACK TO REVEAL.
But job one of the screenplay is to be a good read. An easy read. To tell the story, to enact the drama, with as little fuss and bother as possible.
Some people capitalize ever instance of a character name, or every sound effect, or the appearance of important props. This convention was, once upon a time, used by shooting scripts written by script departments in the old studio system. But those were shooting scripts for films that were already being made.
The screenplay you are writing is a "master shot" screenplay and should not be putting in every imaginative angle and image that occurs to you.
I urge my students to keep the camera's intrusion into the screenplay as minimal as possible. Reserve specific camera angles or lengths for when they are needed for an important moment or gesture. And to remember that a screenplay isn't simply a description of the film you have going in your head.
dialogue that is forced
Answer this simple question: is it the character speaking, or is it you? Is the character saying what they would say at this time, in this place, to this person? Or are you putting words in their mouth?
The most frequent flaw in dialogue is having exposition (past events) or information plunked down unnaturally. Without necessity and urgency and motivation. You are limited to what your character would say at a specific time, in a specific place, to a specific listener.
asked to answer or eliciting dialogue
Another common sin of forced dialogue is what you might call "eliciting dialogue," where you write a line for Jack so that Jill can respond with a clever zinger. When Jack would never say what he said. You eye is on the zinger, not on Jack. Or you have Jack as a question he would not ask so that Jill can supply information to the reader.
A set up.
We all do it. And we all feel very pleased with ourselves when we manage to get the information into the dialogue… but be careful that you really did motivate the dialogue through character. Don't cheat.
The more important the information the more seamlessly it must be presented. Or else the reader feels pushed around.
dialogue all sounds the same
Each character, no matter how minor, must have a distinct voice. If they all sound the same, then chances are they all sound like you.
thinking that interesting event is the same as plot
Just because you think of an interesting event or spectacle doesn't mean it belongs in your script. An event has to be tethered to your story in two ways: motivation and consequence. It has to happen because it must happen, because if flows from a character need, not just because you want it to happen. And once it is motivated to occur, you must be sure to follow the logical consequence — on the action, on the character — of the event.
A plot is not simply a series of incidents. It is a series of logically connected incidents. By logically connected I mean having motivation and consequence.
Aristotle on motive and consequence:
A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end. A beginning is that which is not a necessary consequent of anything else but after which something else exists or happens as a natural result. An end on the contrary is that which is inevitably or, as a rule, the natural result of something else but from which nothing else follows; a middle follows something else and something follows from it. Well constructed plots must not therefore begin and end at random
This idea of event being tethered by both motivation and consequence is a much larger issue and will get its own entry some day.
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