Copyright: 1994 J & J ent..... and Jon George
Citation: All Rights Reserved


                              how to write for the film business

                                                     and

                           how to cope with the business of film

                                               Written by

                                              Jon George

Copyright: 1994, Jon George, J & J ent.....

   All rights reserved

                                     TABLE OF CONTENTS:

  1   Introduction..................."written by..."

  2   Beginnings...................."I think this is the beginning of a beautiful..."

  3   The Concept................."You're the writers. You figure it out..."

  4   The Paper Chase........."Get me something on that by next week..."

  5   The Story Structure...."You gotta hit the ground running..."

  6   The Back Story............"This is your life..."

  7   Essential Parts............."All Cinecitta is divided in three parts..."

  8   Sequences...................."No matter how you slice it..."

  9   Characters....................."There's these two guys,  see..."

10   Dialogue........................."Bullshit, bullshit, my line, bullshit, my line..."

11   Context..........................."I see everything in greens..."

12   Description...................."Where less is often more..."

13   Revisions......................."Give 'em what they want..."

14   Cutting Room................"And the answer is..."

15   The Biz............................"Hello, he lied..."

16   Getting More.................."It's a go?  It's a go..."


INTRODUCTION

   Many people want to write scripts for motion pictures.

Many more would like to understand what makes the movie they

pay good money to see worth seeing.  And some of both types

secretly wish for the fortune and fame that belong to the

select few who make their living in "show business".

   For all of these, the following material can offer

something of value.  It presents the essentials that a

beginner must know in order to write a good screenplay.  It

also provides some insights into how to create a script that

will be accepted as a professional read in the business.

Even if you have no interest in creating films, by reading

the material you will discover what to watch for and how to

criticize the films you pay to see.

   While FADEIN/FADEOUT might not be your only route to

fame and fortune or even to the modest success in the

business I have had, I believe the information I am passing

along will help the beginner in climbing that slippery-

runged ladder to the stars.  And in addition, later on

through direct contact you can pick my brain for whatever

else it may hold that will help you as a budding

screenwriter.

   Other than the material I have given on writing films,

and watching them, in sequences rather than scenes, a fair

amount of what is in my book does not claim to be especially

fresh and different.  All of the good books on screenwriting

as a craft, as well as the many instructors who teach

aspiring writers, cover much the same ground that is found

here in FADEIN/FADEOUT.

   Knowing this, one of my former co-writers who also

teaches screenwriting at UCLA asked me why in the world I

was continuing the effort. "Everything has already been said

a hundred times over," he told me.  Yeah.  This may be true,

but...  In FADE IN, the free book, I get to tell beginning

scripters my own version of the eternal verities, which in a

number of instances are at odds with conventional wisdom.

Second, I believe that beginning screenwriters often need

encouragement and guidance as much as they need a grounding

in the principles of the craft.  I try to give that

encouraging word here and there in what follows, and unlike

some other purveyors of film wisdom I am accessible and

available via cyberspace whenever you need that pat on the

back or that "keep writing".  Finally, I began this exercise

with a clear agreement with myself that I would not stop

with the essentials of how to write a script, but continue

on, providing my own insights and experiences in writing for

film as a sort of map through the wilderness for the nimrod,

the neophyte, and most of all, the nervous.

   That material will be found in FADEOUT, not so much a

sequel to the present work as an expended version.  It is

there that the reader can possibly learn some things he

never knew about both the craft and the business of

screenwriting.  In addition to elaborating upon the

essentials found in FADEIN, new sections have been added

which cover subjects such as breaking in, the players and

the power structure, agents and repping, the WGA, legal and

ethical implications of scriptwriting, freelancing and

assignment work, among others.  There, too, I also answer

some general questions about writing and about the biz.

   As you might have suspected by now, FADEOUT is not

freeware.  Information about its cost, how to order, and

additional services will be found elsewhere in this package

along with several ways to reach me directly.

   But what you have in FADEIN is my gift to everybody

who has slid into an empty seat in the nearly empty mid-day

theater wreathed in the reek of popcorn and anticipation,

who has settled down in front of the VCR with a Ben &

Jerry's and a couple of fresh videos, who has ever felt a

kinship with the old storytellers around the campfire.  If

you know nothing about the form, the format, and the

formulas of screenwriting, read on.  Even if you do, read

anyway, and maybe you'll discover a surprise or two.


BEGINNINGS

   I usually start my writing classes and seminars by

asking the attending hopefuls why they want to write a

script.  Their answers range from the expected -- money,

fame, Oscars, mingling with the beautiful people, and making

the world a safer place for their own particular subset of

beliefs -- to the utterly bizarre.  One woman wanted to tell

a probably apocryphal family story with details that would

have shamed most tellers; a man was clearly looking for a

more graphic resource for living out his questionable and

outré fantasy lives; another man was responding to voices he

had been hearing in his head since a child telling him to

write, write, write; a last insisted throughout the seminar

that both she and her therapist agreed that a film-writing

career was her best hope to avoid being immediately

institutionalized.

   But the essence of wanting to write a script is to see

it come into its final form as a completed film.  Unless you

can envision your words on paper as moments experienced in a

darkened theater, you may still write screenplays, but you

probably won't enjoy the process.   I have  managed to steer

a number of soi-disant screenwriters into the more welcome

arenas of novels, newswriting, poetry.  For many, writing

for film just doesn't provide the kind of creative outlet

with words they are searching for.

   But, quite obviously, those who have thought about it

have discovered their own reasons for writing.  Below, I

have listed a few of those motivations that I feel compel

the beginning screenwriter to move out along his path with

some clarity of purpose and reasonable dispatch.

   Some possible motivations to be a screenwriter:

(a) You have something to say and need the broadest possible

audience to say it to.  For example, my wife and a friend

became producers on a project about the life of a

remarkable woman called "Peace Pilgrim" because they both

believed in the message the woman was conveying to the

world.  Even though the project was never made, two

producers never worked so hard to get something off the

ground; (b) allied to this is the political motivation, as

when the material is merely the medium to take a political

stand on an issue the writer wants to change public opinion

about, to force social change through the power of the

medium.  While many television MOWS take this route, usually

the underlying lack of true motivation dooms them as far

less successful than, for example, the politically motivated

films from Eastern Europe in the sixties and seventies;

(c) writing a screenplay because of a genetic predisposition

to be a storyteller.  It is true that many of the successful

writers in the business today write not because they want

to, but because they have to; it is built into their very

nature.  They probably lied to parents and at school, their

conversations are embroidered with extra twists and turns,

and the ordinary events of their lives when depicted for

friends often take on the proportions of saga.  This bred-

in-the-bone consummate teller of tales may do very well or

terribly in the cut-and-thrust of LaLaLand.  Many times he

makes a fantastic pitchman, but is unable to subsume the

raconteur's urge in his scripts; the push of the innate

storyteller to captivate an audience is very visible, too,

in the highly successful work of writer/directors like

Kasden and Milius; (d) egotism drives many to succeed as a

screenwriter.  In an ego-driven business like film, writing

is one way to see one's name in twelve foot letters.  It is

also true than many with weak or no talent for the writing

game leap into it because it is one of the surest means for

rapid ego-gratification in the business in that the aspirant

needs nothing more than a script to be noticed; (e) some

writers write out of a sheer sense of aesthetics, seeing the

beauty and charm of the arrangement of ideas and words, in

the rhythm of a story, in the way the parts get fitted

together.  So long as this doesn't descend into an urge to

make the script a work of art, it is a very strong and

useful reason to get involved in writing;  f) some write a

script because there is no other medium as effective for

getting across their ideas.  Remember, film is visual, it is

plastic, and it is relatively time-flexible; therefore, it

is perfect for the expression of concepts that fit within

these boundaries, but only for those concepts; (g) and, of

course, for the same reason people bet the Big 6 at the

Vegas crap tables or take a flyer on a bangtail in the

eighth at Santa Anita.  Though it's a longshot, there is

always the potential to make a killing with one play.  As

Dr. Johnson observed, "No one but a blockhead ever wrote,

except for money."

   Here are some other precepts that I mention to my

classes as worthwhile guidelines for beginners:


THE CONCEPT

   Every film and every screenplay begins with an idea

about a story.  For want of a more all-inclusive and

unequivocal term, I will call this the concept.  If you get

into the business you will hear it called many other things,

including the "story" and the "film", and often just the

"idea".

   I believe that it is as important for the beginning

screenwriter to recognize what a concept is not as it is for

him to know what it is.  Below are some instances of the

non-concept masquerading as full-fledged script material.

   The concept is something that should be figured out

before you actually begin to write... not only the

screenplay, but begin anything at all about your story.  In

other words, think about what you want to say before you

start trying to say it.  This is so basic, but so often

overlooked -- even by me sometimes -- that I can never

stress this point too strongly.  A few hours, or dozens of

hours spent thinking about your material at the concept

stage will save you weeks of agony later on in the writing

process.  For make no mistake about it, writing is a

process, and its first step, whether you are writing for

films or composing a note for granny, is the thinking stage.

   In effect, the concept asks and then answers a few very

basic things about your story.  Who are the principals?

Notice that this is not the same thing as saying "who is

your hero or protagonist?"  which is what many say is a

prerequisite for the screen story.  I think that you should

not only have a fairly good grasp on your hero, but on the

opposition, cohorts, fellow-travelers, and equals in the

events of his story.  Too often people spend a lot of time

developing a concept around a terrific character only to

learn too late that they have what amounts to a one-role

movie on their hands.  So , in your concept, be able to

identify all of the principal players, their relationships,

and where each fits in the world of the story.  The second

question is what is the world of your concept?  To answer

this question clearly is to recognize where you see the

sphere of action that will occur in your script.  This is

more than just being able to identify place and time; it has

a great deal to do with the "sense" of the film you are

about to write, too.  The third question is  what are the

goals of the characters?  You must look for what it is that

your characters are striving to attain in your concept.

These may be physical, social, emotional, or even

psychological goals -- but they should be very clearly

defined in your head before you begin to write.  Amorphous

goals for vaguely defined characters do more to destroy good

ideas at the concept stage than any other single factor.

The last question to be asked regarding your concept is what

is the outcome?  Without knowing where your story will

ultimately lead, you will almost invariably lose yourself

somewhere along the way.  It is like starting a trip without

a destination.  The going may be a lot of fun, but a major

disappointment is in store for you when you finally realize

that the journey has no end.

   When you can answer all of the above questions with

fair clarity, as well as any others that may have risen

during this long-think step, you may believe that you are

ready to plunge into the script.  Wait!  You aren't ready

yet.

   The first and best piece of writing you can do, and

this is the first thing I ask of all my seminar students, is

to write out your concept in a single sentence.  Granted,

the first few tries may create sentences Henry James would

have been proud of, but your own goal is to create an

acceptable 'log line' for your concept.  You know; the type

of thing TV GUIDE might be writing about it in their

listings a few years down the line.  But you should be clear

that your own one-sentence concept answers most or all of

the questions I outlined earlier.  This is a tough job.  I

know.  But I make a habit of doing it for every concept I'm

even lukewarm about working on, including assignment work on

somebody else's already written material.  If a concept

cannot be stated succinctly, it usually means either the

writer hasn't a firm grip on its essential elements or those

elements are missing from the concept itself.  In either

case, it's a good thing to know before beginning to write a

script, because your material will ultimately demand these

answers.  Believe me.  Making it up as you go along is not a

good way to approach screenwriting.


THE PAPER CHASE

   Most beginners in this business think only of writing

the script.  However there is a lot more to the "documents

of the case" than the script itself.  The following material

outlines some of these forms and makes some initial comments

about the screenplay itself as a selling document.

   Generally, producers, financiers, and others who listen

to your pitches look for one of three types of "paper" on

the project you are trying to sell:  the short form notation

of the concept itself, a longer prose version of the story

you just told them, or a complete sequence-by-sequence

writing out of that story, including shot headings,

descriptions of the actions and background, and dialogue.

   First, and not necessarily the least important is the

concept sheet.  Whatever it is named, this document should

be little more than a very short retelling of your pitch.

More than the one-sentence log line I suggested you write,

but less than a full-fledged story, it should cover the

essential points of the concept, invariably including

protagonist, his goal, his impediments, and the outcome.  It

is never a good idea to "cheat" in the concept sheet by

omitting one or more of the above items in an attempt to

encourage interest in the project, a bad habit I have only

lately begun to break myself of.  At its simplest, when the

concept sheet is requested the requesting person is looking

for a brief mnemonic on the pitched material, something

that will help him make a decision later on about the worth

of pursuing the project.  First-timers should always

practice writing out concept sheets for every piece of

material they will ever possibly pitch.  In fact, putting

together the essential story elements in such a short form

is an excellent discipline for writers who tend to let their

material get away from them.

   The second possibility is that form of storytelling

dreaded by the pro writers known as the treatment.  The

treatment, a bastardized third-person historical present

tense prose rendering of the major sequences of your script,

is often awkward, and sometimes unreadable even when written

by otherwise competent writers.  Beginning treatment writers

should not worry unduly about the innate limpness of the

form.  Most of those who read treatments regularly are aware

of the limitations of the format and are inclined to be

lenient critics.  But this is no excuse for sloppy

storytelling.  What those who call for treatments are

looking for is a straightforward expression of the central

points of your story.  Leave anything out that is an

integral part of your scripted story at your own peril.

What may also be included in treatments, especially those

running over the fifteen to twenty page average scale, are

snippets of dialogue, more detailed description of action

sequences, and, occasionally, direct instructions as to how

a particular bit must be presented for it to fly.  Some

writers are confident enough in the story they are telling

to also include brief advertisements about the work, citing

marketability, demographic hits, and so forth.  Although

probably not a good idea, particularly for beginning

writers, I don't believe I have ever heard negatively on

this from any producer,  Studio readers may be another case,

however, as this can usurp some of their own prerogatives.

   Finally, and the document that screenwriters should be

prepared most often to offer at the end of a pitch, is the

script itself.  Accompany the script with your own synopsis,

if you prefer; but have the script available.  Asking for a

completed screenplay, as opposed to requesting concept sheet

or treatment, is sometimes a good indication of the degree

of interest on the part of the potential purchaser.

Remember that the material that you have ready should be a

complete selling script, professionally bound, and with

either your own or your agent's contact clearly visible on

the title page.

   Incidentally, do title your screenplay; even if it

changes -- and it may very well change -- before production;

you have given the principals a convenient "handle" to use

for reference, rather than them resorting to "...that

project about the dwarf, the goat, and the strawberry jam."

   If the party you are pitching to requests more than one

copy of your material, don't apologize for having a single

copy; offer to leave extra copies later, or suggest that a

minion make additional copies then and there.  And, do not

expect to get your script back, at least any time soon.

Most screenplays that are left after pitch sessions either

are dropped into a great hole in the fabric of the universe,

or must be retrieved later with a good deal of effort and at

the risk of alienating the production entity for subsequent

pitches.  In short, do not let five bucks worth of paper

make you appear a piker to your principals.  Later, if you

are represented by a large enough agency, you will find that

they will absorb the losses of unretrieved scripts.

   Formatting and stylistics for the three essential

documents -- concept sheet, treatment, and script --

follows some generally accepted lines in the business,

although there is enough variation to allow some

flexibility.  The material that follows is intended to serve

as a general guide for formatting, and writers should be

aware that as times change so do the vagaries of formatting

faddism, in the major studios especially.


STRUCTURE

   Get any three screenwriters together talking about

their craft and sooner or later the conversation will

inevitably get around to structure.  The structuring of a

script is of paramount importance to the writer, usually

because the structuring of the script is inextricably woven

into the structuring of the story elements, and both are

sunk within that often swampy area called plotting.

   First, in the question of screenplay structure, I refer

you to the chapter of this book titled SEQUENCES.  As you

will find there, I make a correlation between the

structuring of the script and the structuring of the story

that is told within the script form.  However, some

discussion of the structure of the story in its own right

can be useful both as a way to look at the purer

storytelling elements of the process, and as a way of

connecting both script and story structure to plot.

   Though it took me an inordinately long time to

recognize the patterns, far too long for one who was

schooled in formal literature, story structure in film is

really no more nor less than the structuring of story

material in any other literary form.  Now let's be clear on

one point; I am not calling any script literature. I don't

think that any screenplay could ever be accurately

designated by that name, at least as the term is understood

by the academics of the discipline.  But it is the job of

the screenwriter to try to tell a coherent story within the

peculiar limitations of the medium he has chosen to write

in, and when attempting that job he can and should make use

of the same basal storytelling structures to be found in any

other primarily story material in literature, be it the

narrative prose of anyone from Fielding to Joyce, the

fabliaux of fifteenth century jongleurs, or the recent

romantic maunderings of a Harlequin paperback.  The stuff of

the story remains fairly constant: a focal point, most often

in the form of a human figure to follow; the evocation of an

environment to place him in, a world peopled with similar

beings who surround him and provide substance for him to

interact with; often a charge or goal to pursue, though

sometimes this is ignored and we unfold the story without

any discernible purpose; and finally a solution or end point

to the narrative thread.  How this material becomes

structured in the particular form in literature, and how

these literary forms become, if not paradigms, at least

functional patterns the script writer may apply to his own

material form the essentials of story structure.

   I believe that there are only three basic story

structure types that a screenwriter should be concerned

with.  They are (a) narrative, (b) episodic, (c) epic.

   The narrative structure is the classic storyteller's

method, a tale told in linear form, with one event following

another along a chronologically stable and logically valid

line.  In the narrative structure, the viewers are taken

from sequence to sequence by their own perception of how

time passes and their tacit agreement that causality is a

universal force governing the world and all who live there.

Although many conventions have evolved in film around this

fairly strict temporal ordering of events -- storytelling

techniques like flashbacks, compression, and simultaneous

actions -- the essential thrust of the structurally

narrative screenplay is to tell the story by moving it

through the passage of time in an order of logically

connected events that is accessible by the audience.

   However, although creating your screen story along a

temporal and logical narrative line is probably the best

choice for beginning screenwriters, narrative scriptwriting

is not nearly as easy as many imagine.  One problem I see

more than any other in beginning scripts that choose to

employ narrative structuring is one that doesn't even appear

to have anything to do with structuring the story, because

it relates to choice as well as time and causality.

   What neophytes don't always recognize is that the

problem lies not so much in keeping their causally related

story points fairly spaced along a temporal spine as it is a

matter of not understanding the incredible number of time

choices in any given story material.  If you were to graph

out any recent narratively structured film using time as

your baseline for the sequences of events, you would

probably be surprised to discover how unsymmetrical and

erratic the spacing of sequences and events would appear.

This is because any story, even one that attempts to follow

Aristotle's skimpy but virtuous time-frame, can encompass

massive amounts of film-world time.  With narratively

structured screenplays, it is not so much a question of "did

I put my story in the right order?" as it is "did I make the

right choices of items to put into some structured order?"

I believe that finding where to place the decimal point is

the most difficult job for beginners in creating a narrative

structure. And the key to this is allowing the logical half

of the formula to dictate the temporal choices.  If you can

recognize and make use of the causal connectivity of your

events, then it simplifies enormously the task of winnowing

from the vast array possible those events which are best

suited to completing the sequential ordering of a narrative

screen story.  In short, choose wisely.

   The episodically structured script derives from an

equally long and established literary pedigree.  Episodic

tales make up some of the seminal stories of every culture.

Episodics are really a series of linked events, each one

essentially complete in itself, that are combined through

common theme, world, or character.  From Smollett's novels

to the British comedies of the sixties, the structure of

episodics remains fairly constant: episodes are roughly

equal in length, and tightly compressed with events; there

is an assumption on the part of the storyteller that the

audience will pick up and follow the sources of linkage

between episodes; and the stories generally have rapid

pacing of all the material making up each episode.  One can

see episodic structuring in many of the big action pictures

of recent years.  Each set of action sequences constitutes

an episode in the peripatetic adventures of the hero; all

episodes are about the same in overall content and screen

impact (or they try to be), and the material whips right

along, rarely pausing to flesh out a linear storyline.

   A specialized form of the episodic script seems to be

gaining acceptance with producers, although it is met with

somewhat less enthusiasm with audiences and certainly with

little by me.

   The last basic type of story structure useful for the

screenwriter, the epic form, is used less often for films

than many mavens of scriptwriting might have you believe.

Epic structure also has its paradigm in literature, but many

tend to confuse the structure with the common story elements

found in epic literature.  Yes, the Poetics does use the

term "myth" as a referent for plot or narrative structure,

but the mythic really has little to do with structuring out

a script. Certainly the "hero" may be of a particular type,

with a particular background; the events of his story may

involve a quest, a search for a particular object upon which

certain events will turn (what the Medievalist would call a

fylfot, perhaps; we can call it a McGuffin); he may even

meet his end in a certain fashion.  However, all these are

trappings of epic poetry, and have little to do with

structure.  Epic structure, though, has a few elements that

speak directly to con-structure of the form itself. To be

epic, a screenplay must align itself along a central theme

as securely as a narrative structure uses time and logic.

Epic structure is the logos, or orderly structuring of

material through idea.  The epic theme is embodied in a

single character whose passage through the events of the

epic story is measured solely by the relevance to the theme.

That is, you make choices as to what parts of your

character's story to tell in epic structure based primarily

on how well they illustrate the theme you have chosen to

present.  Epic structure is, by definition slowly paced,

almost serene in its use of sequence.  Events within epic

structure can almost invariably be graphed on an ascending

order of impact; they crescendo, like grand opera.  Film

does not lend itself well to epic structuring.

Occasionally, in material where the underlying structure was

already in place, as in MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, or several of

the early Kurasawa pictures, it can work very well.  But if

we remember that all the great epic literature was a

reflection of the central cultural zeitgeist, how little

epic material we have to work with today becomes a bit

clearer.

   If you believe that you have story material that is

epic in nature, I can offer the following sincere advice.

   Do not attempt to write your script using an epic

structure.  You will in all likelihood fail.  Instead look

again at the concept and try to isolate why the thematic

aspects are so important to what you are trying to say.

Many times, you can subsume these elements and go on with a

regular narrative structure.  I honestly believe that any

truly epically structured screenplay would be a very hard

sell today.  For one thing, epic, as the term implies

subjectively, suggests "on a grand scale".  And it is all

but impossible to write an epic script that doesn't scream

for a huge budget to realize its thematic importance. I

suspect also that not too many studio people will respond to

the dynamics of epic storytelling.  They all too often

equate thematically epic material with a "message", and

overt message movies are anathema at major studios.

Presented with an epic structure these producers will

probably try to recreate it as episodic, because they are

much more familiar with this form, and the two methods

usually do have some things in common, such as impressively

dimensioned heroes.

   To me, plot is one of the greatest joys of the writer.

Plotting out the events which make up the sequences of your

screenplay is primarily a matter of making the most

felicitous choice from among an incredible number of

available choices.  For example, your screenplay is pretty

much a straight-forward narrative about the tribulations of

a beat cop, brought on by his own dogged determination to

remain loyal to the people he encounters on his daily

rounds.  You decide a critical sequence in your narrative

will be made up of the betrayal of his trust by the one he

has been closest to in earlier street sequences.  Now, you

may plot.  You can try out any number of patterns of logical

events, preferably causally related, occasionally

serendipitous, that will serve to illustrate your story

point and fulfill the sequential requirement of that portion

of your screen story.  If you plot well, you will try a

myriad of possibilities before settling on the one which

satisfies all of the narrative necessities and is

aesthetically integrated into the whole of the script that

you hold in your mind.

   Plotting is an exercise for the good writer.He will plot out

literally thousands of possibilities for his story.  What

follows is one of the best ways I know for running the

scales of plot potential.  It is a simple technique that all

writers can use to improve their plotting skills.


BACK STORY

   Back story is a term given for anything that occurs, in

the movie time, prior to the opening of the script.  In

other words, anything that happens to your characters in the

world you have created before you write FADE IN can be

considered legitimate back story.

   More to the point, perhaps, back story in anything that

happens before FADE IN that your audience must know in order

to understand what is happening on screen.  Back story

includes such stuff as character background, the prior

history of your world, single events or actions that were

causative factors or shaped later on-screen events or

actions -- in short, back story within the script is

anything that clarifies present screentime reality for the

viewer.

   The problem is not so much with identifying what part

of your back story needs inclusion in your script, but

getting it in there without its intruding on the present

story you are telling.  Classic methods include telling back

story over heavy actions, as when during the fistfight

between the principals we might get told about how their

fathers began the feud in the first place; presenting back

story elements visually, as when a film begins twenty years

in the past, then title cards us into the present movie

time; back story can be suggested by letting the audience

make backward inferences from present events, as when the

series of strange doings inevitably lead the kids to

conclude that the house has a haunted history; and of course

the all too often used but ever-popular "face the camera"

and read out the what happened before method.

   In some cases this kind of blatant expression is okay;

certain genres accept it as part of the traditional baggage

of the form -- historical yarns, for example --  but, on the

whole, a little attention paid to trying to be more subtle

in the introduction of the needed back story points in your

screenplay will make you a craftsman instead of a

journeyman.

   Because back story is so intimately related to how the

screenwriter works time in his script, it is probably

worthwhile to read, or re-read the chapter of this book

which deals with that subject.  But, briefly, you should

remember a few precepts on film and time as they relate to

imparting back story into your script.  Avoid moving forward

and backward in the movie time of your script; keep the

duration of your overall movie time as short as your story

will allow; make every point outside of movie time -- as any

unavoidable time slips for back story presentation -- very

clear as a time break to your audience; and, finally, be

constantly aware of how real time plays as movie time.

   Back story elements should not violate your movie time,

with the possible exception of the flashback or flashforward

dictated by your story.  I believe that choosing flashbacks

to tell back story is a poor choice, particularly for

beginners.  Flashbacks force audiences to concentrate on the

movie time rather than forget it, and therefore interrupt

the flow of the story.

   For a real example of how back story can intrude on the

movie time of a film look at any of the BACK TO THE FUTURE

films, but particularly at the first one.  The filmmakers

tried to cram so much of what they knew the audience would

need to know in the forepart of the film, especially the

material setting up character relationships, that it becomes

top-heavy and ultimately confusing in a film whose main

thrust is playing around with time itself.  On the other

hand, notice how subtly Bolt sets up the Lawrence

character's background in a single scene in the maps room at

the beginning of LAWRENCE.  This is efficient back story

presentation at its best.

   Ultimately, as with everything else in your script, you

will have to decide how much back story you must tell to

your audience and how to go about telling it.  There are

some things to pay attention to while you are doing this.


ESSENTIAL PARTS

   Like Gaul all scripts are divided into three essential

parts:  the shot heading, the description, and the dialogue.

Each of these parts is an integral part of the finished

screenplay, but in terms of those who will be reading your

script each part is vital to different people for different

reasons.

   The shot headings -- those elements that always begin

with INT. or EXT., continue with the briefest possible

notation of locale, and conclude with either DAY or NIGHT --

are of most interest to the readers who are parsing your

material looking for potential costs.  How many location

shoots are we looking at, as opposed to how many built sets

on a sound stage; how intricate is the location to be

found/built, and how many day, night, or day-for-night

shooting sequences are we plucking out of the material.

   This is why you, as the writer, should only be

concerned in your shot heads with the same kind of

information they were designed to impart.  In other words,

do not try to tell parts of your story through your shot

heads.  One sure sign of a neophyte is an extended

descriptive passage in the center of a slug line, something

that might read A SMALL ROOM OFF THE MAIN BEDROOM

IN JOHN AND MARTHA'S PALATIAL ESTATE.  Come on,

 guys.  All you need is A ROOM.

   Incidentally, I do not subscribe to the school that

adjusts the last item in a slug line to indicate more subtle

elements of time; as in EVENING or DUSK or JUST BEFORE

DAWN. Hey, the primary purpose of the information you are

imparting is merely to tell somebody if its a day or a night

shoot.  That's all.  If you want to finely hone your

movement of the sun across the sky in your story, do it in

the description, not the shot head.

   These shot headings can give valuable information to

the writer as well as the potential producer.  I discovered

some time ago an incredibly useful little program that can

help show you what your shot heads are saying about your

script.

   The second essential element of the screenplay, the

description, is of paramount interest to the most important

group of your potential readers -- the agents, producers,

and financiers who will be deciding on the merits of your

story as possible film.

   For me, the descriptive parts of a script are the most

important parts.  Even given the peculiarities of the

medium, the vagaries of formatting, and the sometimes

stringent rules that govern how the material is presented,

it is in the description that the storyteller can really get

his story told.  Despite its name, description is not merely

describing what is actually going to be seen on the screen

in any given sequence.  Good descriptive writing in a script

means providing the basic elements of this envisioning, but

also means adding nuances to the events and characters

described that will awaken the interest of the reader and

make him want to know what is going to happen next.  In

fact, finding the proper balance between the pure

description of what will be portrayed on screen and the

elements of story that must be told to make an effective

narrative is probably the toughest job any screenwriter, new

or experienced, must face.  This is where, I believe, talent

enters the equation and ultimately makes the difference.

One suggestion I give my students may help the rest of you

as well.  Try and find a copy of a selling script for a

recent film.  Read the descriptions within a particular

sequence while, at the same time, you are unspooling the

sequence on your video tape player.  Usually, the difference

between what is seen and what is said on the page are enough

to underline what I point out here.

   Good scripts are sixty to seventy per cent description,

a figure which may seem heavy to some who can be fooled by

the necessity of breaking up long descriptive passages on

the page with dialogue bits or shot heads.  There is a

technique that can help new writers cope with  both

underdone and overblown description.

   The final essential element of any screenplay is the

dialogue.  While the whole matter of dialogue is treated in

a separate chapter, I think it is valuable to note here that

most of those who will be concentrating on the written

dialogue in your script are those who will be most

intimately involved with it, namely, the director and the

actors.  Thus your dialogue should speak to them as the

primary audience.  It is possible to put material in the

mouths of your characters that might otherwise be off-

putting to potential buyers of your screenplay.  Most of my

"in jokes" or little polemics get stuck into dialogue lines

in my scripts, largely because I know through experience

that there they are relatively harmless and not destined to

destroy interest or a sale.

   Some fellow writers believe that it is possible to

angle dialogue in such a fashion so as to imply a certain

actor or actress as suitable for the role.  I have never had

much luck with this technique; my Clint Eastwood lines seem

to end up in much wimpier mouths, and any impassioned

speeches I tailored just for Meryl Streep get altered during

production to fit within the mouths of some producer's

bimbette.  But, if you want to try, feel free; but remember

that your character is the seminal source for the lines, not

whomever acts him.


SEQUENCES

   If in my years of work I have come upon something new

in all of the process of screenwriting, sequencing is my

contribution to the craft of writing the film.  I believe

that too many screenwriters, experienced ones as well as

beginners, try to write their stories in scenes rather than

another more "story-friendly" division.  In a very real way,

this is letting the format dictate the storytelling. It is

as if we all were trying to write our scripts in blank

verse, or even worse, in camera shots.  And those who define

the "master scene" as the critical division of a script,

while they may be headed in the right direction, are still

bound by their insistence on format-driven and rather

arbitrary initiating and end points to quantify their master

scenes.

   After a good deal of trial and error, what I discovered

writing scripts, reading them, and viewing a vast number of

films over and over again was something I really should have

known all along, given my education and background in the

study of literary forms.  The story transcends the form

through which it is told!  Sounds simple, doesn't it?  But

if you will follow through on this idea, you will discover

that here is the heart of finding the natural break points

in your film narrative.

   Literature is full of examples of the literary form

leading the story around by the nose, which is why you will

find so many otherwise excellent storytellers working the

nether regions of the august body of the literati, writing

detective fiction, science fiction, thrillers, and other so-

called inferior types of literature.  But what these writers

have learned is that the formulas of these genres never

inhibit the craft of the first-rate storyteller because the

forms are already set in the formulas and thus do not

interfere with the business of the storyteller which is

telling his story.

   As an aside, I would like to explain to why it has

become almost impossible for me to read much recent science

fiction.  Most younger sci-fi writers seem to me to have

discovered the power of form in dictating how their work

will read on the page.  Thus they are turning out works of

undeniable literary merit that are so thin in sheer

storytelling technique that they don't hold the interest of

a reader like the older material of the fifties and sixties.

While this has accomplished wonders for the prestige of

science fiction in the lit departments of major

universities, it hasn't helped many of the newer authors

learn how to tell their stories unencumbered by the forms

that have dazzled them.  Although you may think that this

isn't about writing scripts, there is a lesson to be learned

here; if screenwriters start concentrating on the

configuration of their work rather than the story it tells,

because filmmaking is so collaborative, the failure to hold

their audiences will be even more dramatic than the decline

of science fiction novels.

   I am always hesitant to use finished films as examples

of good scripts, because, as we already know, the on-screen

vision is the result of a collaborative effort by many

people.  But if we look at a movie as a series of sequences,

great chucks of the storyteller's "stuff", I believe we can

begin to learn a lot more about how to put together our own

blueprints for making good screenplays for great films.

   Defining a sequence has always been for me a daunting

job.  Frankly, in my classes sometimes I succeed brilliantly

and sometimes I fail miserably.  Possibly the best gloss I

can put on how I use the term is to make the analogy with

those wonderful headers some eighteenth century novelists

like Smollett or Sterne set at the chapter beginnings of

their work.  You remember:  the "In which our hero loses his

chastity while winning his heart's desire" kind of thing.

So often we are not told of the actual happenstances of the

events unfolded in the chapters, but instead are told the

essential story elements being covered.  Hero meets villain;

hero is defeated by great odds; hero discovers truth about

self, and so on.  There are commonalties in almost every

story, and certainly within genre forms of story types;

these commonalties are the stuff of sequential story-

telling.

   There are several things you must look for in defining

sequences in a script or a completed film.

   First, that segment of the material which I am calling

a sequence has nothing at all to do with the actual format

used in the script or the directorial techniques in a film.

A sequence may begin with a slug line and end with a cut to

a new venue -- it may just as well begin in the middle of a

traditional scene or end on a dialogue line somewhere in the

middle of a short passage.  For example, when Roy Scheider

types the word "shark" into the accident report, that

sequence of JAWS is completed; the protagonist has met the

enemy through his work.  Sequences are not dependent on

formal starts and stops.  They begin and end where that part

of their function in telling the story is required.

   A sequence is determined by what it must do to further

the story.  If the writer is crafting a mix of action and

dialogue whose primary story purpose is to introduce the

protagonist to the antagonist for the first time, that is

basically what he should concentrate on.  This story

function may well cross several traditional "counters" of

scenes, locations, time patterns.  It may take for your

particular story ten or a dozen pages of script, or it may

take half a page.  The sequence remains the constant... it

is that part of the script where the writer tells a discrete

and identifiable part of his story.  The particulars of the

events which make up that sequence is a matter of plot, not

structure, and plot is the variable factor.

   A curious thing happens after you have lived with this

way of looking at films for a while.  It begins to color

your perspective of the medium.  My wife tells me I am not a

lot of fun to go to the movies with any more.  Maybe it's

true.  I tend to laugh, cry, groan, or cheer at peculiar

intervals in the screening.  I am responding to what I see

going on in the actual mechanism of the storytelling craft.

For example, in one of my all-time favorites, LAWRENCE OF

ARABIA, I no longer am as awed by O'Toole's grand gesture of

returning across he desert for the lost Arab as I am by how

well the whole magnificent sequence is defined by Bolt and

delineated by Lean -- Lawrence gives the Arab army not just

Aqaba, but pride, a sequence that begins with the

protagonist's gorgeously framed all-night introspection and

concludes somewhere in the "camels in the sea" scene.

   There is one thing that can help screenwriters more

than anything else to begin to recognize this different

perspective on films, and to learn how to make use of it in

their own work.

   Another element of the sequence is its tendency to

exhibit a discernible beginning, middle, and end --

regardless of its location within a script.  Sequences,

because they are distinct portions of a story, have a kind

of symmetry to them.  This is, unfortunately, more often

noticed in its absence than seen accomplished.  A sequence

that has not fulfilled its story requirement will appear

incomplete and, finally, unsatisfying.  One way to help keep

your sequences entire is to constantly test what is

happening on the page against what service the sequence is

supposed to perform.  For instance, you might look at a part

of your script which deals with the relationship between the

protagonist and his soulmate, just to see if that is indeed

what is being portrayed, or, as often happens, you have

fallen into the typical "love montage" trap.  If your

material is not doing the job, it will more often be because

something is missing than because something is wrong.

   Finally, I think that at the concept stage of your work

you should try a rough organization of your material by

sequence rather than by (master) scene.  Doing so will give

you greater flexibility later on in that, since you know

what part of your story that sequence is trying to get

across, you will not be so locked in to how you are trying

to make your point.  For example, say that you have a

sequence planned early on that you know is your

protagonist's discovery of his central dilemma, and you have

this marked out as a series of events where he learns about

his ignoble birth, confronts his putative father, and is

thrown off the estate.  If you remain constant to your

storytelling focus, you can trade off that whole set of

events for another that will accomplish the same thing.

This is what I mean by sequential flexibility.

   Sometimes it is difficult for the beginning

screenwriter to distinguish between film sequences, film

scenes, and film shots.

   Remember: the shot is the individual camera focus or

movement in the scene, which is a specific set of actions

and dialogue common to a single point of your story, and in

the aggregate these form a sequence, a major dramatic

segment of the story you are telling.  Sequences are

generally (a) composed of a number of specific scenes; (b)

relatively complete entities with discernible beginning,

body, and completion; (c) transcend location and time; and

(d) are intimately related in both function and design to

your core storyline.

   The final thing you should know about sequences, and

something that will be covered in more detail later on, is

there relevance to the overall pacing of your script.

Sequential rhythms are a significant part of pacing, and I

believe that the relative duration (not length per se, but

the actual screen time taken up in telling that particular

sequence) of the various sequential patterns of the

screenplay form an integral part of its general readability.

That is, your sequences should contribute to the sense of

story being told in your script, as well as presenting its

content.

   Not everyone I've tried this information out on agrees

with the importance I give to understanding and using

sequence as a method of scriptwriting.  I do know that

forcing myself to carve up the material in this new way of

seeing the film story has improved my own storytelling

techniques in scripts I have written, and it has also

allowed me to become far more attuned to knowing how and why

a particular part of a script, my own or another's, is not

working.  I believe that recognizing and using sequential

storytelling in scripts is a very necessary part of being a

good screenplay writer.


CHARACTER

   Although I firmly believe in almost all film that drama

is action, there still must always be someone to act.

Knowing your characters is one of a beginning writer's most

important jobs, after working out the story sequences.  As

you begin to flesh out your concept, you will probably come

to have some understanding of your protagonist, and possibly

his antithesis, the antagonist.  But in the process of

writing your script you will have to get to know all of your

characters, major, secondary, and peripheral.

   Advice on building characters in films generally takes

the form of compiling a list of a character's salient

characteristics, physical, mental, and psychological.  This

is an old pattern, a là Lagos Egri.  And there is certainly

nothing wrong with beginning a character list by jotting

down as many of these traits as you are comfortable

assigning to your characters.  But it is important to

continue from there, because a good, workable character is

far more than just an aggregation of characteristics.  A

good character must have depth and intensity, and evoke a

patina of reality that generates sympathy or empathy in the

audience.  If the audience recognizes those elements in your

characterizations that approximate their own experiences,

elements that are validated by the reflection of reality in

the characters' actions, dialogue, demeanor, and

sensibilities, then they will engage your characters, relate

to them, and accept them within the reality of the film

story your have created.  Remember, your characters are

presumptive people, and as such should have verisimilitude

with those other presumptive people, your audience.

   In film, a character is defined by his actions, and

confirmed by his dialogue.  This is very important to

remember.  You should not let your characters explain

themselves, except when the explanation is illuminating a

prior or pending action.  And even then I suspect that it's

not always a good idea; the character then too often takes

on an added and unwanted characteristic of moodiness, or

introspection, or even sheer talkiness. The use of interior

monologue, a mainstay of character revelation on stage,

doesn't really work very well in film, probably because the

direct expression of inner self violates that sense of

filmic reality that creates the world of the picture.  And

scripters should also recognize that action that defines a

character does not necessarily imply the purely physical

action generally associated with the term.  An action

evoking character can be a look, a stance, a grimace or a

gesture -- any physical manifestation of attitude or

personality that is graphic and visual rather than verbal in

form. Remember that incredible framing of Lawrence atop the

wrecked train in Lean's masterpiece; or the even more subtle

method by which young Lawrence extinguishes a match.

Sometimes even the failure to act tells us more about

character than an overt action.

   The distinction I want to make clear in this passage is

between revealing character through what we actually see on

screen as opposed to attempting to tell us about character

through letting that character speak or others speak about

him.  The latter is a wonderful technique in prose; in film

it evokes immediate qualities of amateurism.

   And there is another distinction, one that many

newcomers to script writing never quite get under control.

You must never, never tell your readers in the character

descriptions who you think the characters are.  I have read

many many first time screenplays with overblown character

analyses immediately appended to the first mention of a

character.  If your initial thumbnail of a character in your

script can be clever and succinct, terrific -- but the

character will ultimately become known to the reader by what

you have him do, not by what you say he is.

   A character must act, rather than react.  By this I

mean that when you place your principals within your story

sequences, you must give them the room to determine their

own behaviors and to accept the consequences of their

actions (just like real life, isn't it?).  If you are

constantly meddling in their actions, placing improbable

impediments before them and then waiting for them to

respond, you may be creating a hell of an exciting

interactive computer game, but you are probably also

creating bad characters.  It is a truism in this business

that, somewhere in the second act, characters begin to take

on life outside what you have set for them in the script.  I

think that this is a true truism.  It is validated by how

often inexperienced writers let their principal characters

get away from them in the middle part of their screenplay.

You look up and suddenly discover that your hero has gone

off on a tangent of his own, and you are way, way off your

story spine.  Even with these alarms, internal character

vitality is something you should watch for and exploit.  At

best, it opens entire new vistas in your sequences; at the

least, it is a clear indication that your characters are

becoming strong and well-realized.

   It is important, particularly in today's climate of

filmmaking, to create characters who express emotion and

"feel" things.  Because of my own shortcomings in this area,

I recently came on a trick that can be extremely helpful to

other writers whose characters have forgotten the emotional

side of life.

   Ideally, your characters should have several lives.

They must live within the confines of the world you are

creating with your film story.  They should also be capable

of living within another story.  An excellent test of your

principals is to place them in minor roles in another

script.  Do they behave correctly; i.e. within character?

Are their actions and speech consistent with who they are?

Or, as we often discover to our dismay, are they only

workable as the leads in their own dramatic circumstances?

A character who is fully realized should be able to go out

to dinner with you, to fill out a job application at a local

business, ask a friend for a date.  If you have trouble

envisioning your characters performing any of these actions,

or anything else you can think up to stretch the vitality of

your players, then, quite possibly, your characters are not

real enough to exist without the twin underpinnings of your

story world and your story sequences.

   Another good measure of whether you have created really

good characters is your own willingness to live with them as

real people, particularly within their own stories.  Who of

us wouldn't relish going along with Danny and Peachy to

Kaffiristan, now?  In fact, it sometimes useful to place

yourself in some minor role in a sequence, merely to see how

involved you can become with the other players in your

script.  If you have trouble talking with or relating to

your principals, they may not be real enough to work.

   Good characters are well-motivated characters.  This

almost goes without saying.  But so much is made by others

of the super-significance of motivating characters

adequately, I must put my two cents in.  Sure motivation is

important.  But overt motivation is, I think, always a poor

idea.  Your expression of motivation should probably not be

explicitly stated, but be inherent in the totality of the

character you have created.  To have your principal explain,

even through how he behaves, his burning desire for revenge

is always less effective than to create him with the kind of

personality who is innately revengeful.   In my own

experience as a script analyst, editor and doctor, I have

generally found characters in screenplays to be over-

motivated.  That is, many writers appear to try and openly

state character motivation as if this were the way to

realize the character himself.  It just doesn't work that

way, folks.  The obviously motivated character is a

character who will appear flat, underdeveloped, and weak to

your audience.  Better by far to exhibit no motivation for

your principals at all other than what the audience may

infer from their actions than to try and cram character

motivation down your audience's throats.

   As a corollary, I must discuss the recent phenomenon of

"internal growth" as the mark of quality characterization

and, in many cases, screenplay quality itself.

   It is an inevitable phenomenon of the movies that they

make characters either big or small.  Although much of this

lies within the purlieu of the director, a screenwriter does

get first crack at exploiting this phenomenon in the service

of character generation and development.  Especially in that

first evocation of your character, you have an opportunity

to give your audience a mind-set on where the character fits

within the reality of your film world.  For example, the

opening sequence can depict your principals as marginal,

ant-like beings in a vast universe (note how the hardware

dwarfs the human figures in the space shuttle sequence of

2001); claustraphobes clawing their way out of their

environment (the first, sleeping pod sequence of ALIENS); or

looming over and overpowering their circumstances (the

beginning sequence of MAGNIFICENT SEVEN).  You don't have to

strive too hard or make too much of this quirk of the

medium; but note it and use it if it fits within your film

structure.  Even if you only suggest the opportunity, a

clever director can pick up on cues you have placed and make

this work toward better characterization.

   Characters may be functionally classified as either

major, secondary, or peripheral.  Major characters, and of

course this will vary according to the story you are

telling, the budget you have in hand, and your own

professional stature as a scriptwriter, should generally

number no more than five or six.  The protagonist, his

antagonist, a foil for each, a love interest, and perhaps a

mentor are possibilities out of a much larger canon

available to the writer.  Secondary characters are usually a

factor of three of your majors; that is, with five

principals, you can conveniently have as many as fifteen

secondary characters.  Peripheral characters are virtually

unlimited in number, though anything upwards of fifty to

sixty better be both a significant contribution to story and

part of a major production.  Too often in first-time

screenplays, all three categories are unnecessarily high.

You really do not have to make that Waitress or that Bell

Boy a day player; in many cases you do not even have to

reference a character there at all.  As a rule of thumb,

writing economically in the use of actors for your script

equates with a professional understanding of the cost of

what can become one of the larger budget items in a

production.

   Here are some additional points on characterization

which can aid screenwriters in creating the right kind of

people to inhabit the film world of their story.


DIALOGUE

   Dialogue for the screen is significantly different from

dialogue for the stage, though many writers never figure

this out.  Stage dialogue is meant to tell the story; screen

dialogue merely supplements the storytelling.  A little

application of this rather simple principal will do wonders

in changing how you go about writing a screenplay.  One

weakness I consistently find in the scripts I am asked to

make better is a writer trying to tell his story through

dialogue rather than description.

   For starters, I believe that any script that is more

than one third dialogue is probably trying desperately to be

a stage play.  There simply isn't room for long, windy

passages on the screen.  People may talk up something like

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, but, at heart, it isn't a film but a

filmed stage piece.  In fact, many of the most vocal of our

films have their origins in the theater.  Once the beginning

scripter recognizes that he rather than his characters is

the storyteller, he can get on with letting them talk only

as an adjunct to the actions they perform in the story.

   Some things that dialogue will not do for your script:

It will not solve your story problems.  The days of an

audience accepting the Inspector summing up the evidence in

the drawing room at the picture's end are long gone.  If you

have not worked out your plot sequences, you cannot expect

your audience to swallow any deus ex machina verbiage to

cover your shortcomings.  Certainly you can confirm story

elements; this is actually a very appropriate use for

dialogue for a screenwriter.  But you should not either set

up or try to get across essentials of your story in spoken

words.  At best it is awkward, "stagy" and often obtuse; at

worst, it is a vital turning point of your tale lost on the

lips of an actor.

   Similarly, dialogue is never a very effective

substitute for the visuals of your script.  Show it, don't

say it is the watchword.  Believe me, your audience would

much rather see someone go over Niagara Falls, with or

without barrel, than have the best actor in the world tell

them about it.  Also, I do not believe that you should allow

your dialogue to be the primary vehicle for expressing the

inner feelings and attitudes of your principal characters.

Soliloquies worked fine for Hamlet; for film they are a weak

substitute for actually seeing the outward manifestations of

a character's emotional take.  Some might disagree with me

here under the impression that I am somehow discountenancing

ever having a character say a word about how he might be

feeling.  Not so.  If there is an appropriate time and

situation for a character to say something self-revealing,

by all means let him say it.  But think how much more

effective an "I love you" is when accompanied by a hug and a

kiss.  The physical expression of internal emotions is much

more accessible on film than it can ever be on stage --

remember the close up? -- and it is especially satisfying to

the audience to have this intimate view offered to them.

   Please. Please never let your dialogue preach a moral

message or put your own point of view in the mouths of your

characters.  If you really have something important to say

in your script; don't worry, it will be in there in the

overall imprint of your authorship; and, besides, the

audience probably won't get it anyway.  If a screenwriter

wants to use film as his medium to change the world, more

power to him.  But he better find an altogether congenial

group of collaborators to work with and he better find an

entertaining way to put his points across, and having a

character preach to an audience is never entertaining,

except maybe for Orson Welles in MOBY DICK.

   Finally, and I find that this is a constant problem

with beginning scripts, do not let your dialogue fill space.

New screenwriters quickly get enamored of dialogue once they

see how rapidly it uses up pages, and forget that a movie is

supposed to move, not talk.  In my seminars I use a flip

test to illustrate how dialogue can get away with a writer

who isn't keeping strict control of his medium.  Thumb

rapidly through a completed script; if there is a good deal

of right-margin white space showing, there is probably too

much talk relative to description.  One of the first things

to cut in revision is dialogue; and it is surprising how

much unnecessary garrulity goes into a script, even for

experienced writers.  The touchstone here is to only let

your characters speak when the speech fits the action.

Characters who describe themselves for us, who spout

inconsequentials, or who labor the obvious (like repeating

what we are actually witnessing on screen, as in "Oh,

there's a knock at the door. I better answer it.") are not

saying anything worthwhile, and it is your job as writer to

shut them up.

   Essentially, good dialogue must be clear, fast,

appropriate to the character, speakable, and real.  Let me

explain what I mean by each of these points.

   What, in the final analysis, does dialogue really do in

a script?

   It helps...


CONTEXT

   The context of your film, the mise-en-scene as some

term it, is essentially the world of the story you are

telling.  It is where, when, and how the story gets told,

especially in the sphere of time and space.  It is also how

the filmic experience of the story is expressed, with regard

to time, style, and the overall sense of the story itself.

   Because a movie is made up of pictures, unlike, say, a

theatrical drama which is largely told through dialogue, how

you express the bulk of your context will be found in the

blocks of description that you use in the screenplay to tell

your story.  Clearly, description must also add to the

creation of the world of that story while never losing sight

of its primary objective, the expression of the events which

make up your film story.  Shot heads, while they may center

a particular scene's actions in both time and space, are not

particularly evocative of context; nor do they relate to the

real manner in which the story is told, which is through the

use of sequences which often transcend particular scene

divisions.  Similarly, while dialogue can sometimes indicate

both time and location and even at times evoke some of the

atmosphere of your screenplay story, dialogue that works

toward these ends rather than its own innate purpose is

usually stilted and unreal.

   I believe that context is terribly important in a good

script.  The ability to express the totality of the world of

your story while working within the rather strict stylistic

confines of the medium requires a lot of hard thought and

even more revision.

   The physical context of the film is both the whole

world the writer is creating -- a scatter of rebellious

planets chafing under a dictatorship at some far point in

the future -- and the invocation of particular parts of that

world -- the farming planet, the death star, the garbage

disposal shaft. In describing those individual venues where

each sequence of actions will play itself out, you must

always be aware of how the parts fit the whole, and whether

any single element will violate the rules of your creation.

For every film context must have its own set of laws as

absolute as physics.  What distinguishes the failure of many

thriller movies, including at least one of my own, is a

failure to maintain consistency in the laws of the world of

that movie.  You simply cannot have a villain that is

superhuman and invincible in the forepart of your picture

suddenly become an easy mark for your feckless teenage

heroes in the final sequence.

   Generally, the audience is quite aware when you violate

the integrity of the world you are making.  This can be seen

easily as in the dropping in of temporal anomalies in a

piece which is expressly set up for a particular period of

time; i.e. a current slang phrase in a "sand-and-sandals"

epic.  But it also can appear as a much more subtle mistake.

Because a good part of the overall context of a film is its

presumptive tonal sense, to ignore this aspect is virtually

as glaring as to park a new Mercedes in a forties street

scene.  For instance, if your overall world is one of

anticipation of something terrible in the offing, a sense of

dread, and you drop in a character doing a comic turn right

out of a youth movie, you have broken the rules of your own

world as thoroughly as you do when you add gravity to a

hitherto weightless world or slip an anachronistic phrase

into the mouth of a character.

   Also part of that physical context is the duration of

event that makes up the time factor in the story.  The whole

question of how time works within a story is so complex that

to fully explore it deserves a separate book.  For

beginners, it is enough to mention that the closer your

story stays to real time, the more it will be acceptable to

your audience.  Obviously, a story whose scope surpasses the

approximate two hour time limit of the film itself is going

to have to discover ways to move the audience through time

without giving them temporal vertigo.  A little later, I

will talk more about how time works in the medium.

   For some of us, the trouble with handling context has

some ready-made solutions.  Genres usually deal in a sort of

pre-set context; that is, the world of a western genre,

cattle drive sub-genre, has its world already fairly well

created for the writer -- and it is a world that the

audience is quite familiar with.  The predisposition of

genre forms to carry their own method of story-telling and

to hold their own context within their form can make life a

lot easier for many scripters.  Think for a moment of any

John Ford western, or even CITY SLICKERS.  There, once we

are past the set-up, we are plunked into a very familiar

world, our context is set, and we can get on with other

things the storytellers want to do.

   Occasionally, you might want to go against the genre's

traditional context; it might work, depending on your story,

but be warned.  Going against the form is taking a large

chance that the audience will follow you away from the well-

known world you have initially suggested by invoking the

genre.  And once they have followed you, you better be a

very clear guide to the new and unfamiliar world you are

assembling for them, and you also better have a good reason

for dislocating them from the familiar.

   The discernible parts which make up a screenplay's

context include the following elements: the physical world,

as we have seen; the temporal world, or the time both of

your physical, that is, the movie's world, and the real-time

expression on the page; the pacing of the events of the

script; and what I call the mental aspects of context, the

mood that rises from your screenplay like a suite of rich,

expressive smells over a city.  Making the context apparent

without forcing it down your audience's throat is one of the

more difficult jobs a beginning screenwriter must face.

A more detailed examination of how these elements work

within a script may help the beginning screenwriter apply

them to his own work.

   Finally I suppose that the best lesson to learn about

the mise-en-scene of a film script is consistency.  The

world -- physical, temporal, and mental -- that you are

bringing into being must have a verisimilitude approaching

our own reality.  The movie audience will stand for quite a

lot, but it will not stand for unreasonable incongruities,

except to stand up to leave the theater.


DESCRIPTION

   Description will make up the bulk of what gets written

in a screenplay. As mentioned elsewhere, I think that a good

script should be at a minimum sixty-five to seventy per cent

description.  Yet I have found this to be one of the

shortest chapters in this book.  It is, I believe, because

once I have suggested that you describe clearly and eschew

figurative language, maintain the historical present tense

in your descriptions, omit everything in your descriptions

that is not pertinent either to the events of your story or

to the creation of its world, -- there is little more than

can be said about good screenplay description.

   However, at the risk of being windy in a chapter that

is attempting to persuade you of the virtues of brevity and

absence of clutter, I will add a few of my own quiddities

about this business of describing what goes on in the movie.

   Certainly a lack of clarity is what spoils most of the

scripts that get sent down the pipelines to agents, actors,

producers, and financiers.  Let me be clear on this myself.

Many of those who will be reading your material and deciding

whether it warrants developing into a motion picture are not

very discerning readers themselves.  Some are, but a lot of

the people I have come across in my years in the biz simply

"don't get" a lot of what they read.  And, after some years

of blaming them for shortcomings in education, taste, or

choice of parents I have decided that the fault more often

lies with the writers of the material, and more precisely in

the descriptive passages of the scripts the writers write.

If you do not describe clearly and without room for

misunderstanding what it is you are trying to describe, you

should not then blame someone reading your description if

they fail to see your events unfold, or your characters act,

or your world come to life.

   Many writers, and not only beginners, use far too many

modifiers when they write.  The qualifying word or phrase is

more often in a descriptive passage an equivocation on the

part of the writer, who either does not see clearly what he

is trying to describe or who doesn't have the necessary

skill with words to define it precisely on the page.  Let's

face it: expressions of the surf as "gigantic, cerulean

Neptunian farts" (I'm not kidding; that is a direct quote)

may be on the way toward making a fair sea poem, but it does

not simply say "waves".  When in doubt, simplify.

   Some people write screenplays the same way they would

attack telling their story in a short story or a novel.  The

descriptions in a script, though, are not at all like

descriptive material in those other prose forms.  Using a

prose model, and attempting to indicate the time

relationships of various events by way of using the rich

tense sequences that are available in English will always

create confusion in the readers of a script.  Descriptions

of events in a screenplay demand the simple historical

present tense, and writers stray from it at the peril of

losing their readers.  I have found that even in dialogue

layering anything more than simple past, conditional, or

future into the tense sequences runs the risk of creating a

misunderstanding by the audience as to when events mentioned

by a character have occurred in film time.  Because time

itself is so elusive in film, verb references to time are

also slippery beasts.  Ergo, stay in the here and now as much

as you can.

   Finally, descriptions are the single greatest source of

fat in a script.  This is true of virtually every screenplay

that I receive from a beginning writer.  Usually it is

because they aren''t all that clear on the two essential jobs

their descriptions must perform -- primarily to present the

events that make up the story being told, and secondarily to

define the world that story takes place in.  Everything else

is probably superfluous.  Of course, nitpickers can point

out the necessity of using a part of descriptions to, for

example, intro the principal characters; I think this is an

essential part of the second task of good description,

though.  And, incidentally, it is a good place to test for

obesity in your material.  I believe that any character

intro that takes more than a single descriptive sentence is

overweight and destined for later trimming.  Yet beginning

scripters persist in blocking out whole paragraphs of

information about their principals, a practice that not only

slows the reading pace of the script, but in many cases also

reveals far too much at once about their characters.  In all

your descriptions, work toward a leanness of prose style

that would make a city editor proud. In short, cut out

everything which does not do what description in a script is

supposed to do.


REVISIONS

   Nobody really likes to revise.  It is tough, demanding

work, and if, as is so often the case, the revisions are

being done to your own work, it sometimes appears that you

are engaged in a Sisyphean task and your screenplay will

never be finished.  But revising a script is more than just

an unpleasant but necessary chore in the list of things that

have to be done.  I believe that revising is virtually as

important as writing the material out in the first place.

As I tell my clients, if you aren't willing to change what

you have written, you will never be successful in the business.

   Actually, screenplays are much easier to revise than

other forms of literature.  Ask anyone who has labored over

a six hundred page prose manuscript, and see if I'm not

right.  Because a script has such discrete parts, and

because each of those parts involves a particular element of

the storytelling, revising a script can be almost a modular

exercise.  That is, you can attack dialogue one day,

sequencing the next, your descriptions the day after.  While

eventually you will have to integrate all of your changes

back into the coherent whole, this divisibility does ease

somewhat the daunting mountain of that twenty-second

revision.

   That last wasn't a misprint either.  For many reasons,

some of which I go into later, you should expect to write

more than a single revision of your script.  My experience

is that the heavier revising comes at the early stages, when

you are making changes to satisfy your own sense of what is

right or wrong in your material; later revisions can become

progressively minor, ending with perhaps adjusting some

dialogue lines to suit the exigencies of casting or

smoothing out a transition between two sequences you never

expected to be juxtaposed in the original.

   And even though you may reach a point in your own work

where you are absolutely sure that not another word needs

altering, others will not be so kind -- nor should you, for

that matter.  These are some of the basic reasons for

revising a script you feel is already at its peak.

   Along these same lines, I think that the revising

process can be conveniently divided into two basic parts;

revising done early on at your own insistence on quality in

your work, and revising done later after the input of

others.

   In the first stage revising, I would check every single

sequence of the first draft screenplay against the original

concept. Does each sequence perform its required job in the

storytelling process?  Are your principals set sufficiently

in the opening sequences of your script?  Is the world of

the story clear enough, and if a particular genre is being

followed, have you dropped the right clues as to genre?  Is

there a "hook"?  That is, is there something in the initial

sequence that generates audience, and reader enthusiasm and

makes them want to continue with your story?  Is the primary

conflict set, including its sources?

   Examine the pacing of your sequences.  Does it fit the

story line? Are there places where necessary exposition or

back story is slowing down your events?  Which sequences

seem to be slowing the momentum of your narrative.  Are the

transitions between sequences effective and efficient?  Do

you see alternative ways to solve the same story points?

Where have you made the throughline of your story too hard

(or too easy) for your audience/reader to follow. Where are

your sub-plots? Have any sub-plots intruded on the thrust of

your main story?  Are any sequences merely repeating the

same story information?  Does the story "build" in the right

places?  Which of the individual scenes in your sequences of

events could serve as "popcorn scenes"?  These are the

places in a movie -- and in your script -- which are so

meaningless that half the people in the audience end up out

at the concession counter.

   Look at your characters. Is each of your principals,

and perhaps even some of your secondaries, a separate

relatively complete individual?  Do your characters act and

speak consistently with the concept, the world, themselves?

Is their motivation clear at each character shift in the

story?  Is each character's content -- the actions they

perform and the dialogue they speak -- in balance with his

relative weight in the story?  Are all of the relationships

between the principals clear?  Do the characters talk like

their world talks?  And, can someone cast them?  Play them?

   Read all of your description at once, omitting all shot

heads and dialogue.  If you can, pull this out as a separate

document on your processor.  Does this description tell your

story?  Where does it appear excessive or redundant?  Where

are the dead spots, those places where physical description

of setting overwhelms physical description of event?

Beginning anywhere in your description, read it aloud.  Is

it difficult to read?  Does it sound "artsy-fartsy"?  Does

the prose style you are using reflect the story and assist

in setting the mood?

   Read over the dialogue, deciding with each speech if it

contributes to the story or is merely "fill".  What is the

balance between dialogue and description?  You can use what

I use in my seminars, the dreaded flip test.  Grasp your

script firmly in the brad sides and rapidly flip through the

pages from front to back.  How much fat margin did you

notice?  If you noticed much at all, go back, flipping

slower, until you find those places in your script that are

dialogue-heavy.  Separate out the dialogue for each of your

principal characters and read it alone.  Does it sound like

it was said by one person?  Do various characters talk

similarly?

   Count your shot heads.  Do they seem excessive for the

story you are telling?  What is the ratio of heads to

sequences?  Does it fit with the number of individual

scenes? Look at each head?  Does it tell you what you need

to know about each shot in the most efficient, that is, the

briefest way?

   Go over the mechanics of your writing.  Clean up

grammatical bad manners, misspellings, and typos.  Make your

revision as clean as possible before you think of giving it

to even a fan of yours.  At the same time you can examine

the stylistic.  Are sentences short?  Are you almost always

using active voice?  Using historical present tense?  Is

your vocabulary expressive without being excessive?  Is the

formatting acceptable, with no page breaks within your

description or dialogue blocks?

   Finally, at this early stage of making your script

better -- for that is what revision is all about -- do not

be afraid to rewrite whole sequences or even to throw them

away altogether in favor of something that works better in

telling your story.  It is not uncommon to have to scrap as

much as one-third to one-half of a first draft, although

this ratio begins to get appreciably lower with greater

experience.  For the pros much of the editing and revising

at this first stage level is done in the head, and what

actually makes it into written form has already undergone a

number of changes before a key is struck.

   The second opportunity to revise your screenplay comes,

as I mentioned, as a result of your asking for it or because

it is thrust upon you.

   The real mark of a good screenplay writer, I believe,

is his willingness to continue making seemingly endless

revisions to his work to make it a better piece.  It is more

than, as many see it, just a matter of editing and

proofreading.  It is a labor of love.


THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

   I feel I have named this chapter appropriately because

it contains bits and pieces that either do not fit

comfortably within one of the other sections or because

portions might be considered a tad esoteric in a work

designed primarily as a guide to beginning screenwriting. As

so much of the material in this chapter derives from

questions asked me while I was teaching screenwriting or

other forms of creative writing, I have decided to retain

this format.  Internet cognoscenti can think of it as sort

of a "frequently asked questions" about anything and

everything pertaining to the craft and the art of writing

for film.

   Question:  Why can't I get my script sold when

everybody that reads it says it is "brilliant"?

   Question:  How much time does it take to write a

script?

   Question:  What are the clues that readers of my script

will see that I am not a professional?

   Question:  What are your solutions for writer's block?

   Question:  Do you believe that a screenwriter has a

moral or ethical obligation to his audience?

   Question:  What are some common mistakes that a

beginner makes in writing a script?

   Question:  How much credit should I give my audience

for knowing what is going on?

   Question:  How do I know when to end my script?

   Question:  Are any parts of a screenplay more important

than others?

   Question:  How can you possibly live on selling only

one script every three or four years?

   Question:  A producer has read my script and is now

asking for changes; what should I do?

   Question:  Is there one thing you try to keep in mind

when you are plotting out the events in your screenplay?

   Yep.  "Irritation generates action, and action always

follows the line of least resistance."  This dictum and its

variations are a real tonic for knowing where to go next.

I'd also like to add another quote here:  "Sooner or later

we must learn all knowledge.  It is therefore necessary to

begin.  And for a beginning much may be learned from this:

that men in pain and men in anger are diverted from either

sensation by a song -- and very readily."  This is more

about screenwriting than you might think...


THE BIZ

   This chapter does not purport to cover in detail all of

the aspects of an industry that is in its own way as complex

as aerospace or automobiles.  What I do here is provide for

the beginning screenwriter some foretaste of: (a) who the

principal players are in the business; (b) the procedure of

what actually can happen to a script when it is sold; (c)

some elements of what goes into that other, more ignoble

half of the screenwriter's trade, selling what you write;

and (d) some tips on keeping busy and keeping up with the

business.

   My only other advice regarding working your own deal is

to get very clear in your head what it is you do want before

you go into the negotiating session.  Some may be after the

money; others the glory.  I know one writer who traded off

the whole back end, except for ancillaries (he thought one

character in his script would look cute on a lunchbox) for

the right to be "present and consulted" during the shoot.

It's whatever you want, you know.  The reason somebody is

sitting down with you or your agent is because they are

genuinely interested in making your screenplay into film.

That represents power on your side; know what you want that

power to buy for you and do not be afraid to ask for it.

The real power in negotiating is the power to walk away.

This was brought home to me several years ago when a friend

of mine, a producer, picked up his twenty months in

development project from one studio, returned the huge

advance payment to the studio, and walked away from getting

the picture produced there -- all because the studio was

trying to renege on their agreement to film one sequence the

way the producer wanted.  Now that is negotiating power.

And if you think the producer was crazy, maybe you didn't

like the final sequence of TOTAL RECALL as much as I did.

   A final word here about the world of the biz.  As I

suspect most writers are, I have never been much of a herd

animal.  Yet an enormous amount of what gets done in the

making of movies is decided through close personal

interaction occurring between groups of individuals at large

industry gatherings.  It is sometimes difficult to reconcile

the solitary work done with computer and keyboard with the

massed masses of a typical LaLaLand show biz party.  My

advice:  learn as best you can to adopt the protective

coloring of the naturally outgoing, gregarious, chit-chat

loving, people-pleaser.  You may not like the role, but

eventually you will be required to play it to the hilt.

And, too, recognize that some genuine friendships are to be

made with genuine human beings.  Allen's gnat's navel is

bigger than he, or we would ever have thought.  And

Hollywood is both the dream and the reality for those who

dare to try her.


GETTING MORE

   If reading FADEIN has inspired you or, better yet, if

you have ordered and read the industrial-strength FADEOUT,

by now you may have written all or part of your own

screenplay.  If you are sure that it is the best you can do,

I want to congratulate you and encourage you to start

working to generate interest in it by using some of the tips

I gave in FADEOUT.

   However...

   I would like to tell you about another service I

provide aspiring screenwriters.  I will read your complete

or partial script and, at one of two levels, provide

professional assistance in giving your work the best

possible opportunity for serious industry consideration.

   At the first level, I will read your work, analyze

fully its strengths and weaknesses, and create a detailed,

sequence-by-sequence report that you can use to improve your

script before you place it in the hands of agents or

producers.

   At the second level I will undertake whatever

significant revisions we both agree are necessary to make

your script a marketable one.  This is not a formal

collaboration.  You simply will be hiring my writing and

editorial expertise, and this will require a contract

between us to determine my participation in the project and

clarify writing credit in the event that your material is

produced for film or television.  A copy of this contract is

available for you to read before committing to this level of

service.

   My fees for these services are commensurate with those

charged by others who offer similar services.  But because

you may send me your material on disk and receive my

responses the same way, and because you may access me

directly through my e-mail addresses for additional

explanation and assistance, I believe what I provide will be

of much greater value to you.

   Please contact me at one of the e-mail addresses listed

elsewhere for further information on these services.

   To read FADEIN, from Windows simply click on the FADE.HLP

file. MAC users, see below.

   File list:  FADEIN.HLP, the e-book FADEIN Windows Help

format;ORDER.TXT, order form for FADEOUT., the book with more

than twice the material found in FADEIN; DESC.SDI and FILEID.DIZ,

pattern files for BBS use.

   FADEIN is the freeware version of this book. A much longer and

more complete version of this book is available as well. The cost of

the complete version of this book, FADEOUT, is twenty dollars

($20.00), U.S. Please send cash, check or money order for $20.00

to Jon George 2335 Meadow Valley Terrace,  Los Angeles, CA

90039, together with the completed order form found in the file

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   MAC users please note: The disk materials for this e-book are

also available in several PC versions suitable for converting to use

on Mac systems; notably in a pure ASCII text file and as a Word for

Windows 6.0 file filterable to Word for Mac. It is also possible that

the FADE.HLP file will work with the MAC help engine. Try this

first.

   FADEIN and FADEOUT are copyright 1994, by Jon George,

J & J ent..... All rights reserved. No portions of either

book may be reproduced without written permission of the

author.

   Jon George may be reached at the following e-mail addresses:

America on Line  -  ANNIRAFF@aol.com, or CompuServe    -

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further notice, to ,jgeorge@admin.elcamino.cc.ca.us

   DISCLAIMER: This electronic book together with all

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other warranties whether expressed or implied. Because of the

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is offered. By using this program or any accompanying materials

the user assumes the entire risk of use. Liability of the seller is

limited exclusively to product replacement or refund of purchase

price, any such refund to be at the sole discretion of the seller.

By purchase and or use of this product the buyer warrants that he

will be the sole user and assumes full liability for any unauthorized

reproduction or use of any portion of this work.


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