When is enough .... well .... enough

[ScriptNurse]

You're done when ...

• Your spell checker cannot find any misspelled words.
• There are no misused words (i.e. their/there, your/you're, etc)
• The most literate and analytical person you know can't find any misspelled or misused words either.
• You've read it out loud from start to finish and it sounds like English.
• It's written in high school level English.
• You cannot find better or more visual words to describe the action.
• You don't want to change anything any more.

[rnbrewer]

To be honest I'm really not sure what the "rule of thumb" would be. I don't want to sound cryptic or anything, but I always assumed that the re-writes keep going till... well, it's finished. You just know. If it's starting to feel like all you're doing is nit-picking and stripping good elements from the story, than chances are you've gone as far with it as you can. The best thing to do now is get it out there so someone can read it. Preferably someone who can provide you with feedback.

It helps to have that outside perspective.

[padnar]

Well you are lucky you can see flaws in your baby,
but I am a proud creator and my baby have no flaws, but the whole world is  wrong.
padma

[Chuck58]

My wife and I have both finished screenplays. Hers, I believe, has a better shot at being optioned or bought than mine due to subject matter.

Anyway, we put them aside for a while and went on to writing new scripts. After a reasonable amount of time, we began editing and rewriting. Lots of changes in both. Put them aside for a few days and, yep, more editing and rewriting. And again, and again.

Is there a rule of thumb as to when to say it's as finished as it's going to get? Six edits? Ten? More? Can any writer ever read his/her work without seeing something that, in their mind, couldn't be made just that little bit better?

At some point re-writes begin to have a detrimental effect, robbing a script of whatever spark or freshness it had. How do we, as the creators, make ourselves see when we're approaching that point?