Rewrite by Paul Chitlik

Author:Paul Chitlik [Chitlik, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Michael Wiese Productions
Published: 2013-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

To Do

Check all your scenes to ensure that people are speaking with the appropriate status.

For more on dialogue, be sure to read Talk the Talk: A Dialogue Workshop for Scriptwriters by Penny Penniston.

MAKING DESCRIPTIONS

LEAP OFF THE PAGE

Here’s one of the basic contradictions a writer has to face. You know that a reader, probably not the producer, is going to be the first person at the production company or studio to read your script, so you have to impress this person. (A reader is someone an executive, agent, or producer hires to read a script and write a report that includes an analysis, a summary, and a recommendation. A reader is the first person empowered to say no to your work. And she usually does because that’s the safest thing to do.) We know that motion pictures are all about what you see on screen, so you’d think that the descriptive passages of a script would be important. And they are. But readers often skip through them to get to the dialogue because they think, sometimes correctly, that the character is shaped by the dialogue. And dialogue is easier to read. But harder to write.

Does that mean you shouldn’t pay attention to description? No. Does it mean that you shouldn’t write visually? No, on the contrary. You should still make the reader see the movie as best you can, and that’s where your writing style for descriptive paragraphs will pay off.

Before you start to rewrite all the descriptions in your script, let’s talk a little about what your pages should look like and why. First of all, pity the poor script readers. They generally read two, sometimes three, scripts per day. Their eyes get tired. They need white space to rest them on. If your script reduces their eye fatigue, they will automatically be happier with your script. So you want to make their job easier by giving them lots of white space.

No, you will not sell a script based on the amount of white space on a page. But you may lose the reader’s interest if he or she has to plough through dense and long paragraphs. You want to make your paragraphs as short and succinct as possible. Michael Goldenberg, who wrote the screenplays for Contact, Peter Pan, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Green Lantern, says you want to make your description “efficient but provocative.” Jack Epps Jr., who co-wrote Top Gun, Legal Eagles, and Dick Tracy, urges writers to “write in small fragments using verbs instead of nouns.”

No one has ever been accused of having too little description. Screenplays are terse, filled with short phrases emphasizing verbs always — always — in the present tense.

Connor drags himself to the bed. Falls. Checks his arm. Blood spurts out of his wrist. He slams his other palm on it. Nearly faints.

Short declarative sentences. Fragments. Lots of verbs. But the scene is clear as a bell, isn’t it? You can see it, can’t you? You don’t need to know what kind of bed it is, or even what Connor looks like.

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