“What are you doing?!” Automatic “change me” in dialogue!

If you have a character looking at a guy who’s running with a knife pointed right at him and says, “What are you doing?” either your character is an idiot or you are. Hopefully not both.

“What are you talking about?”
“What do you want?”
“What is that?”
“What did you say?”
“Is that a gun in your hand?”

That kinda thing. I see these all the time and they are generally tip offs that the line should be improved.

Don’t have someone ask an unbelievably obvious question! Figure out a way to let that valuable space on the page help move the story forward.

Check your script to see if lines like this are there… then change ’em!