Just Effing Entertain Me

Subplots or "B" Storylines

There are of course charts, graphs and stacks of books on every aspect of screenwriting. And at times it can all feel quite academic and intimidating. I know I used to feel that way about subplots. Subplot – what do you mean? I just figured out the main plot! Aaargghhh!

But think of it this way – your character has more going on in his or her life than the adventure at hand, right? Your character has or had a job, a spouse or significant other, parents, siblings – a life. So the B Story – or subplot – is going to be related to something else going on for your main character, if not something going on with another significant character in your script. It’s another, lesser complication and it also adds to the lesson or journey for your main character.

Writing subplots is part of writing three-dimensional characters – the adventure happening to them does not exist in a void, right? Stuff was going on for your character before the story began and stuff will go on after the story ends. Characters cannot exist in a bell jar. Subplots not only create a more compelling, fleshed-out story, they are part of a more compelling, fleshed-out character.

Your script might have several strands or subplots that all thematically connect and relate to the main plot. A subplot doesn’t necessarily have to take up much screen time but it will definitely have a beginning, middle and end.

A great way to study and really GET subplot is in sitcoms. Just because they are quite overt. Rachel and Ross decide whether to live together – subplot – Joey auditions for a part as a dinosaur. And you’ll notice the connect-a-dots with the subplot interrupting the main plot only enough to play itself out pretty efficiently.

Subplots do a lot of things for your script: They flesh out the world and the characters and they also serve as a way of creating more tension in the main plot because we want to get back to THE GOOD PART and see what’s going to happen! I could say a bunch of academic stuff here about how the subplot needs to be in service to the theme – but, is that academic? Or just plain obvious? Right? The subplot is some kind of version – even an opposite version – of the theme in the main plot.

Let me think of some subplot examples off the top of my head – mind you, I am only plucking out ONE subplot from these examples, of course there are more:

LEGALLY BLONDE: Elle tries to help her manicurist friend with her love life.

BEETLE JUICE: Lydia’s horrible mother, Delia, is an “artist” who seeks to turn the house into an avante garde haven for her pretentious friends.

MILK: Harvey’s relationship with his boyfriend is strained by his ambitions.

3:10 to YUMA: Dan Evans tries to earn his son’s respect.

HOT FUZZ: Nick Angel’s friendship with Danny Butterman.

SCARFACE: Tony Montana’s relationships with his wife and his sister.

STAR WARS: The love triangle between Luke, Princess Leia and Han Solo.

POLTERGEIST: Craig T. Nelson’s relationship with his work – the evil company that paved the burial ground in the first place.

So take a look at your script – do you have subplots going on? And are those subplots in service to the main character and the main plot? Does each of your subplots have a setup, a complication and a resolution? Does the subplot (or subplots) fit organically into the larger plot? Does the subplot speak to the theme?

Remember, subplots don’t need to be complicated, necessarily. Subplots are complements to the main plot. They add nuance, complication and emotional complexity. You don’t need to overthink your subplot – I’ll bet you already have at least one. Just make sure you set it up, complicate it and pay it off.

Bigger Set Pieces

One day this could happen to you. You’re sitting in a meeting with an agent, manager or producer (okay in my case, I am talking about a producer) who says to you - I really, really like the script. Great concept, great writing, I think I can sell this. Except…. He leans forward. Could you just…make the set pieces, I don’t know – bigger?

And you stare. And you think, what do you mean – bigger? I have this incredible car crash or fight scene or jet fuel explosion – how does that get BIGGER than that? You mean like, more stuff in the scene? Yeah, exactly – he says – more stuff!

And you leave the meeting and google the nearest bar. More stuff. What the hell? But this is where the two most powerful words in screenwriting can be your friend. And those two words are “what if”. But let’s wind back the tape and talk about just what a set piece is:

Set pieces are the – wait for it – stuff that producers dream of. Because set pieces are the parts of movies that audiences remember the most. Think of some of your favorite movie moments – likely those moments were set pieces. Set pieces are relative to the genre of the movie, so your set pieces may have nothing to do with jet fuel or car chases or smashing through plate glass windows. Set pieces are the essence of show don’t tell. Set pieces can be five minutes long or just a quick moment.

The other night, I (re) watched BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY and had a new appreciation for great set pieces. When Bridget shows up to the Tarts & Vicars party and it’s been canceled – that very first moment when all eyes turn to her in her ridiculous bunny suit – that’s a terrific set piece. The montage when Bridget shaves her legs, waxes her punanny and works out really hard – that’s a set piece. Set pieces show up in the trailer for your movie. They are on the poster. They sell the movie.

One set piece from BRIDGET is a perfect example of more stuff in a set piece. And here we harken back to those golden words: What if? Colin Firth and Hugh Grant get in a fist fight outside in the street. It’s a great confrontation, it really is. Because every time it gets good, it gets better. So what if the two main love interests are duking it out in the street, in front of Bridget? What if as they start fighting, they tumble into a restaurant? But – what if someone was having a birthday party in the restaurant? What if, just as the fighting is really going crazy, a waiter brings a birthday cake into the room? A really elaborate birthday cake? And what if, as a comedic detail, the two characters stop fighting momentarily to join in singing “Happy Birthday?” And THEN the fighting resumes and they crash through a plate glass window? So we’ve gone from a confrontation out on the street to a full-on slapstick reverie. With a lot of stuff.
It is helpful to go through your script and simply list the set pieces you have. Do you have at least six? And – do they have enough “stuff?” Are they big, bigger, biggest? Are they exciting and scary and funny or whatever your genre calls for?

Set pieces are the coin of the realm when a producer reads your script. You need to not only deliver a number of entertaining set pieces in your script, you need to make sure they are as chock full of exciting detail and “stuff.”*

Stuff: going into the Rouge Wave vocabulary along with BOSH (Bunch Of Stuff Happens, but not good stuff).

Kurt Vonnegut and Story Graphs

A very dear friend lent me A Man Without a Country, a sort of memoir/musing hybrid by Kurt Vonnegut and I read it in one sitting yesterday evening. It was a Friday evening and I had opportunities to do other things but once I picked up the book I couldn’t put it down. What a delightful read. Vonnegut muses on life, fossil fuels, writing and the fact that “We are here on earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.” And this – I love this: “What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do.”

I was especially delighted by the story graphs in Chapter Three. They are so basic and make such sense. The Kafka graph made me laugh. Start low. Proceed downward…to infinity. For those of you who may not have seen these graphs, click HERE and enjoy. Kurt Vonnegut passed away in April, 2007 and I just have to say that Kurt is up in heaven now. That’s something he found very funny and I just had to say it.

Have a lovely weekend, Wavers and don’t forget about the bulletin board items of yesterday. I’m too lazy to type that all again but click HERE to refresh your memory – Script Department Table Read, Creative Screenwriting Expo and of course, the latest short scene competition right here on the Rouge Wave.

The Organizing Event

Ah – autumn in Los Angeles…hot dusty Santa Ana winds and half the town is on fire again. Well, the fire is in the Valley but still…

The Santa Ana’s create a strange atmosphere – literally. Not just the increased dust and the bone dryness of it, not just the palm fronds that litter the streets, it’s a mood, something that descends upon Angelenos like a stealthy Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Here is a passage from Joan Didion’s essay “Los Angeles Notebook”:

There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio Passes, blowing up sand storms out along Route 66, drying the hills and the nerves to flash point. For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night. I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.

Now think about your script. Your comedy, thriller, horror, drama – genre doesn’t matter. What is it that is inexorably descending upon the characters in your script like a hot, uneasy wind? What is making the maid sulk and the baby fuss? What is not quite right in your fictional world?

The organizing event is closely related to be not exactly the same as the ticking clock. The organizing event is what set that clock to ticking in the first place. The organizing event may have occurred on page negative ten, page negative 25 or it can happen on page one. It can be what everything is racing toward on page 75. The organizing event can be a national spelling bee, a devastating earthquake or the arrival of the aliens.

The organizing event is the sometimes ephemeral, sometimes quite clear event that is pulling everyone and everything toward itself in your story. It can be the event that sets everything in motion – but it can also be the event that everything is racing toward. The organizing event can be something that happened on page negative ten which set everything in motion so that on page one, as we jump in late, the effects are felt.

In JUNO the organizing event was Juno’s pregnancy. In DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR it was the theft of the car at the top of the script. In RAT RACE it was the race – not the getting to the money on time, that’s the ticking clock, but the race itself. In REDS it’s the Russian Revolution. In SUNSET BOULEVARD it’s the murder of Joe Gillis. In THE GRADUATE it’s Ben Braddock’s recent college graduation. In MEMENTO it was the murder of Leonard’s wife. In JAWS it is the first shark attack. In DONNIE DARKO it’s the jet engine falling into the Darko house. In THE RAINMAN it’s the death of Tom Cruise’s father.

So give this some thought, Wavers. What is the organizing event in your script? If you aren’t sure, ask what the ticking clock is and then pause and think about what set that clock to ticking in the first place. Having an organizing event can illuminate what your negative page ten (recent back story) is. It can ensure that your ticking clock is organic and powerful. It gives your characters something around which to gather, strive for, avoid, or fight against. Like the Santa Ana’s, it’s something in the air, something which has descended upon your fictional world which makes extraordinary decisions and actions necessary.

Top Ten Things Readers HATE

Good morning, Wavers. I trust many of you, as usual, are busily thinking of a clever one page scene for the latest competition. There’s nothing to lose and a $25 gift certificate to gain. Plus we like to have fun at the Rouge Wave, so, you know, you really gotta give it a whirl. Click HERE for the guidelines and click HERE to submit.

Also: just FYI, I have recently had requests from two production companies and a lit manager for some GREAT scripts. I have already submitted a few this week, from my client base but am definitely looking for great material to get out there. Obviously, I have to read the script first and yeah, that obviously means do some notes on the material, but the reputation of the Script Department has grown to the point where I am getting hit up for good scripts. So. Just put that in your pipe and smoke it. I am looking for anything well written, but also family, tentpole, action, horror and thriller.

So the happy, happy class who took Ten Things Readers HATE over the weekend requested that I repost that list here on the Rouge Wave. Now – you really had to to be there and I can’t reprint everything that we discussed in a 90 minute class. But I will reprint the list itself just for fun. This list could have been much longer but this is what we discussed at the Great American Pitch Fest. And remember – because it’s the Wave-inatrix – my list actually goes to 11.

Bear in mind that readers are often overworked and underpaid and your script may be the third script they read that day. So they’re a little cranky, a little jaded and they really want to go to bed. But no. Your script is staring at them and they gotta get through it quickly so they can turn in the coverage that night so tomorrow they can go pick up six more scripts from another production company a long, smoggy drive away. So I’ve set the scene, right?

Top Ten Things Readers HATE:

#11 A script over 120 pages.

Reader thinks: Please kill me now. The writer doesn’t have a good grasp of structure and tight story telling. Great. Just great.

#10 The writer sent weird shit in the mail with the script.

Reader thinks: Oh god. A rank amateur. Some kind of nut. What is this map/sketch/doll/polaroid/music and how fast can I toss it to the floor so I can just read the script already?

#9 Boring, derivative scripts in which nothing happens.

Reader thinks: Wtf? Where’s the conflict? What is the bloody point here? I hate this writer! Why can’t he or she just tell me a story already! I’m hungry. Maybe there’s something in the fridge. Maybe I should throw some laundry in. But I have to get this script done and – I hate this writer!

#8 Wonky Tone or Genre

Reader thinks: Wait – I cannot draw a bead on this. It’s funny, it’s graphic, it’s scary, it’s got characters with more personalities than Sybil. I can’t sum this up, I can’t follow where it’s going. There’s no cohesion. I’m gonna PASS this writer so fast his head’s gonna spin. Gd it.

#7 Bad, Confusing Sluglines

Reader thinks: My eyes! The humanity! These pages are cluttered and overslugged. Too many details in the slugs! Or – completely generic slugs – ext. house – day – oh come ON!

#6 Gratuitous, Shocking Sex or Violence

Reader thinks: Really? Am I supposed to be impressed or shaken by this? You’re dealing with the wrong reader, pal. If it’s not in keeping with the tone and narrative, if it’s just there to pop wheelies and tell me way more than I ever wanted to know about your sexual fantasies or urge to scoop out eyeballs with a melon baller, then color me NOT impressed.

#5 On the Nose Dialogue

Reader thinks: Talk about an urge for violence – what do you think I am, stupid? This dialogue is patronizing, dull and amateur. But hey – this is going to be a fast read and an easy PASS. Bring it.

#4 Dense Action Lines

Reader thinks: Like I’m going to wade through this crap. I’m just trying to synopsize this quickly and efficiently. And this is killing my eyes, slowing down the read and adding exponentially to my already cranky mood.

#3 No Structure: the BOSH script

Reader thinks: Nothing is moving this story forward, it just goes and goes and goes. It’s a BOSH script! (bunch of shit happens).

#2 Lame Characters

Reader thinks: These characters sound, act and look like robots. If there was one thing that might have gotten me into this story, it would have been characters I give a damn about. But no. Is this writer serious? Does he or she read this dialogue outloud? People don’t act this way. These are types! Oh! I’m so cranky!!

#1 Typos and malaprops

Reader thinks: Oh come ON. Seriously? One or three is one thing but now I’m beginning to feel personally insulted. Proofread! Is it that hard? Do you want to be taken seriously??

Now, Wavers know that there is a remedy to every single one of these items. And if you are new to the Rouge Wave, look at the Browse by Topic and click on corresponding subject labels to read up on how to do a better job and improve your craft. Mostly, just do the opposite of each point made here. But of course, there’s a lot more to it than that.

The larger point of the class is that you have to imagine yourself in the reader’s shoes. And during the class, cruelly, that’s just what I did, by passing out the first ten pages of a script that somehow managed to accomplish everything on this list save number 10 and that’s just because I didn’t bother to bring the map of the castle to the class. I gave everyone four minutes to read the pages (about how long a reader would spend, give or take) and asked that they circle those things that are slowing down the read for them. It was painful to watch, and I’m sorry, but it was effective, no?

Thrill Ride

So lately, the Wave-inatrix has been helping out a friend with a really fun, action-packed action-adventure script. He had the first act done, actually, but was needing help beating out the second act (because he knew, from having set up the first act, about what his third act had to be already). So we’ve been having a lot of fun with it – this is going to be a rollicking good time and because I am sworn not to discuss it, all I can say is it has a huge, perfect, never-been-done hook. When my friend gets this off the ground, he’s totally taking me out for some surf n turf. Dammit.

Recently I had the pleasure of having a young pianist and USC student of film composition over to the ol’ place to play my 150 year-old piano which is, beyond my books, my most treasured possession upon which I can play slightly imperfect versions of the Canon in D and my all time fave, Hoagy Carmichael’s Heart and Soul. Hey, it’s music to me. And my neighbors.

The pianist – we’ll call him Julio – asked about the story I was helping with. I described it and he grinned from ear to ear and said – like this? And began to score the story idea. It was an amazing experience to see how a composer plays with the story to arrive at a theme for the score. The main theme. The scary parts. The romantic part – all based on the established theme. Julio asked what the set would look like. He asked what the theme of the story was. He asked about the rating the movie would likely get.

But the best was yet to come. Sitting on the creaky old piano bench, Julio turned to me and said – tell me the scariest part. I made a pretty good scary set piece up on the spot and Julio played fast, frightening, action-y music. He turned to me again. Like – would this be a ride at Universal? It only took me a second to respond to that one. Why yes – yes it would!

I had what our beloved PJ would call a “ding dong” moment. Or, in my own parlance, an ohhhhhhhhh moment. Yes, yes this script could totally be a thrill ride! But the pianist wasn’t done. What would you ride in? What would be the first thing the ride does?

And right then and there I began to simply make stuff up. For one, the actual author of this story wasn’t there so I had to take some liberties but suddenly, set pieces began to inspire me.You’d be riding in this rickety canoe! The pianist began to play. And – you’d go over this waterfall that’s on fire!

And suddenly, set pieces for the 2nd act began to appear to me as set pieces that would just have to be on that thrill ride. I wonder what screenwriters get paid if their movie becomes a thrill ride? A nickel for every passenger? Hey, that could add up to a lot of cupcakes.

Later, I told my friend about the experience and he was delighted and inspired by some of the set pieces I had imagined on the thrill ride based on his script. Together, we began to build on the set pieces so that they really capture the essence of the story and escalate the narrative in fun, dangerous ways.

To be perfectly honest, I had heard somewhere once before that imagining your action-adventure as a thrill ride is a great way to come up with set pieces – I’d just never done it since this is not the genre I write. If you’re writing an action-adventure, I highly recommend imagining the ride that would go with it.

Now, I know a lot of Wavers are reading this thinking – fat lot of good that does me, I’m writing a period drama! 1) please, god, say that’s not true but 2) so you’re writing a different genre. You can still make use of this idea by imagining the trailer moments for your script. That is an oldie but how many of you have tried it?

Trailers are generally set pieces with pivotally funny/scary/dramatic moments of dialogue punctuating them. Try it today Wavers – write a trailer for your script so far. In prose – I’m not recommending you abuse Final Draft by literally writing a trailer. But what would that trailer look like? It would start with what, be punctuated by and wind up with what?

Can you distill the most exciting, pivotal moments in your script? No matter where you are in the process of writing your script, from the imagining/panicking stage to the final touches, this is a fun exercise.

Sex and the Screenwriter

by PJ McIlvaine

Okay boys and girls, gather round as Mama PJ gets ready to pontificate on one of her most beloved subjects: sex and the art of screenwriting. All right, you can stop with all the sniggers. I’m not joking. Really. A screenplay and sex have more in common than you might think on first blush.

After days, weeks, months, years of voluntary, solitary servitude, you’ve finished your screenplay once and for all. Bravo! You revel in richly deserved post coital bliss. You’ve toiled long and hard for this moment. You have absolutely no doubt in your mind that this is best thing anyone has ever written since Moses went up on the mountain and got the Ten Commandments from you know who. You’re so love with your script, you don’t stop to ask if you will love it in the morning. Tonight all the constellations and the stars have aligned. You’re giddy with passion and glee. It’s mine, all mine, and no one can take this precious moment away from you.

Okay, now let’s leap ahead a couple weeks. You keep playing and toying with your script, but now you just don’t love it, you’re besotted with it. Obsessed. While the act of writing was a temporary high, a great release, a catharsis, it’s not enough. It never is. Now you want other people to appreciate your masterpiece, to see it in the same light that you do. You want to show it off, you want to strut your stuff to all those VIP’s who can bring your dream to life. Isn’t that what it’s all about? To see your fantasy, your reality, on the silver screen or the boob tube or maybe on a sheet in your backyard. Fill in the blanks.

You know what comes next. You have to pimp your script like a mean mudda brudda in the hood. It’s a wild world out there and you’ve got to throw your thighs, I mean, your logline out into the big blue beyond and see who bites. So after many sleepless nights, you finally come up with a logline full of snap, sizzle, pop and crackle, a tease to make those VIP’s request (i.e. beg) to read the script. When you do it right, they have no choice but to ask to see more, even if they do so out of guilt or shame or plain old curiosity. When you do it wrong, it’s the cold, cruel silence and sting of a lover’s rejection. You want them, but they sure as hell don’t want you. You’re not alone. We’ve all been there.

Keep this in mind as you go fishing: every time a reader, manager, agent, producer, director or actor picks your script to read, it’s the equivalent of going out on a blind date. It is. Trust me, they want to like you. They really do! Otherwise why would they bother going through this ritual day after day, night after night. Their job is to find a script that will dazzle their boss, secure a promotion, appease a star, finalize a deal, promote themselves, burnish their reputation, get someone off their back or get them laid and a thousand other Very Good Things that doesn’t necessarily have anything do with the quality of your work.

Do you honestly think these execs want to schlep through ten to fifteen scripts a night just to fall asleep alone on the sofa? Of course not! They’re filled with anticipation and apprehension each time they crack open a cover stock. Is this the script the one that will knock their socks off? The screenplay that will give them an Oscar, a fancy foreign car, a mansion in Malibu, a yacht, a blow job from some nubile young actress? Or halfway through the damn thing will they be praying that an atom bomb drops not only on them but the idiot who wrote this drivel? They have your script in their hot little lands, and now you have to bedazzle them. They want to be seduced and you want your script to seduce them at least for the next hour and a half.

Consider this: the first pages of a script are just like foreplay. You want to flirt and tantalize and get their creative juices flowing with all sorts of wonderful possibilities. You want them to want you, all of you! Also, you have to make them feel that they’re in the hands of a pro, someone credible and capable, someone who’s going to give them a hell of ride for one hundred some pages, not someone who’s gonna fizzle out after page 20. They don’t want to spend a couple of precious hours with some bumbling, stumbling fool who wouldn’t know their way through three acts without a map. And if you are that bumbling, stumbling fool, do what I do. Fake it! Make them believe that you do know what you’re talking about. That’s what writers do! We fake it all the time, but we make ourselves look good as we do it. Don’t hold back. Pull everything out of your bag of tricks. Who knows when, or if, you’ll get another chance? If you don’t have them hooked in the first couple of pages, forget it, that deliciously wicked twist on page 65 won’t matter.

Ask yourself who would you rather spend an evening with: Malcolm, a nice guy who goes on about his tedious business, brushes his teeth, goes to work, tells long winded stories with no punch line, goes home and eventually discovers a dead body in his basement around page 85…or Devon, a redheaded conniving little live wire who juggles two husbands and two sets of kids that don’t know about the other and who is always trying to keep one step ahead of another husband she abandoned in Alabama (but not before clearing out their joint bank accounts) and that pesky FBI agent who wants to cuff her for his own nefarious purposes. Listen, I’m as straight as they come, but hell, I’d rather spend the night with Devon (or her unsuspecting, devoted spouses).

If you tease em’, you have to please em’, and not only in the first act. You have to keep the tension thick, the drama throbbing, the humor constant and stretched like a rubber band, the complications escalating until everything goes bing, bang, bada boom in the most wild, the most unexpected of ways, yet a way which is also logical and organic to the story. Translation: if you have set it up early on that a mongrel is going to scamper in and save the planet before complete annihilation, you can’t suddenly have an elephant trample in.

Oh, and another piece of advice, for pity’s sake: no extended, drawn out finales/climaxes. I’m sorry, maybe some people like this, but I don’t. Damn it, once you’ve reached the climax, get out of Dodge quick. You know exactly what I’m talking about. The extended talking head scenes explaining the preceding seventy-five plus pages, the twists and turns that no one saw coming (not even the writer but they decided at the last minute to pile it on for extra effect, hey, it worked for so and so and he made a bazillion bucks), the useless verbiage just to add more junk in the trunk, the “villain” who takes a hundred bullets in the head but returns for one last monumental battle between evil and the Good Humor Man, the cute but oh so predictable “here’s what our loveable goofy characters are doing in the future” outtakes, the car chases that go on for pages and pages with the inevitable fifteen million car chain reaction crash on the freeway in which our hero miraculously survives and swaggers away without nary a scratch or a blister.

Bah! Makes me want to take a shower.

If you’ve done your job right, when that VIP puts your script down, he should be as in love with your script as you are. In one fell swoop you’ve found your champion, your best friend, you’re Knight in Shining Armor. If you haven’t….well, you know, with the first schlub to show interest, pick yourself up, put on a new outfit, try a new hairdo, and liberally douse yourself with perfume or aftershave. You can take this to the bank: as sure as there is another script to write, there’s always another prodco, another manager, another agent…tomorrow.

One Minute Per Page?

Did all of my beautiful ones have a lovely weekend? You Rouge Wavers are keeping us on our toes at the Script Department – and the Wave-inatrix likee! Cupcakes for all of my friends!

Here’s another great Waver question:

How do you make sure you get your ‘page to film’ timing as close as possible? So that you don’t write 90 pages that only lasts for 50 min, or 50 pages that lasts for 90 min. Since you’re not always completely sure of the place were it will be filmed, timing it in your head might not be accurate enough.

Take it away, Monsieur Bart Gold

Let’s consider this an overdue new installment in my old “INT. BRAIN – DAY” series of essays on screenwriting.

The minute-per-page rule is an imperfect guideline that obeys a certain law of averages. Some material usually falls victim to the imperfections of film production. Material gets cut because of budget overruns, scheduling fiascos, or just hits the cutting room floor in post. That makes the run time of the film shorter. There may be ad-libs or pauses that make dialogue longer in certain scenes, adding more time to the finished film. Realistically, the post production process alone could add or subtract several minutes. SOME margin of error is implied, but a properly written script typically ends up close to a minute per page.

Let’s assume for simplicity of discussion that everything in a script is filmed as written. It’s important to realize and to accept that each individual page of a professional screenplay might not literally take one minute as filmed.

I always like to use the example of Dances With Wolves, where a 4 line snippet like–

EXT. FRONTIER PLAINS – DAY – MONTAGE

Several shots follow the lieutenant and his mangy horse through the fields and plains of the pristine, unsettled old west. No one else around for miles.

–could cover a six minute montage of screen time near the beginning of the movie.

Likewise, a page of dialogue might fly by in seconds:

INT. FRANK’S GARAGE – DAY

Frank impatiently tries to teach Clyde how to fix the old Buick’s timing belt.

——-FRANK
–Left.

——-CLYDE
–Left?

——-FRANK
–My left!

——-CLYDE
–There?

——-FRANK
–Ahh!

——-CLYDE
–Got it.

——-FRANK
–Hurry!

——-CLYDE
–Why?

——-FRANK
–Because

——-CLYDE
–Why?

——-FRANK
–Beth’s coming over, okay? Go!

This dialogue, delivered at a comedic, quick pace, took me and my fiancée about 8 seconds. As it turns out, this dialogue, which I just made up, takes about the same amount of page space as Jack Nicholson’s big “You Can’t handle the truth” diatribe at the end of A Few Good Men, which is a much denser piece of dialogue and of course takes longer to say as a result.

Now, in your question, you give two extreme examples: 90 pages versus 50 minutes and 50 pages for 90 minutes.

First, let’s talk 90 pages to 50 minutes. I would bet the only way you’re going to be that far off is if your screenwriting style has too much useless filler in it.

Now, that Frank-Clyde scene is already pretty sparse, and too many pages of such dialogue will seem really thin already. But buckle in, I’m about to inflict some pain that is familiar to many readers: I’m going to take the Frank-Clyde scene and stuff it full of overly thick description and stage directions to make it take two pages instead of one.

INT. FRANK’S GARAGE – DAY

The rickety old garage features a tool bench full of clutter and oily rags. There is an old pegboard full of gardening hoes and shovels, and there are several yellow light bulbs dangling from the dusty rafters. Frank paces, wearing blue jean style coveralls and an Iron Maiden tee shirt that looks like he’s owned it since 1985.

Clyde lies under an old Buick, which is up on cinder blocks courtesy of a JACK.

Frank impatiently tries to teach Clyde how to fix the old Buick’s timing belt.

——-FRANK
–Left.

Clyde moves his wrench and the timing belt to his right.

——-CLYDE
–Left?

Frank frowns.

——-FRANK
–My left!

Frank looks very irritated now, and Clyde, that big lovable dope, he just keeps making Frank even more infuriated due to his incompetent repair skills.

——-CLYDE
–There?

Frank can’t take it any more.

——-FRANK
–Ahh!

Clyde nods. This time he’s sure he understands what Frank means for he (Clyde) to do. Clyde twists his wrench counterclockwise and aligns the timing belt with the engine’s rusty alternator gear. With a loud SNAP, the gears fall into place.

Frank looks relieved.

——-CLYDE
–Got it.

Then Clyde starts to turn his wrench, AGAIN! Ugh! Frank is growing more impatient.

——-FRANK
–Hurry!

Clyde looks at Frank, curious.

——-CLYDE
–Why?

Frank doesn’t look like he wants to admit to the truth here.

——-FRANK
–Because.

Clyde is made even more curious by Frank’s restrained expression.

——-CLYDE
–Why?

Frank SIGHS.

——-FRANK
–Beth’s coming over, okay? Go!

Now, clearly I committed several sins here. Not one of these stage directions was needed. Any director with half a brain would realize that the ‘business’ of the engine repair would naturally be part of the scene and ask the actors to act out something similar to what I added. And of course if a guy says ‘why?” it’s redundant and pointless to waste 3 lines of script stating that he is curious. (By 3 wasted lines of script, I’m counting the line of action text in question, plus the two added blank lines around it.)

Worst of all, I committed the sin of writing a scene that any experienced reader is going to be annoyed reading. An experienced reader/agent/exec has a intuitive sense of how much should be happening per page, and if the writing is padded like this, the reader/agent/exec is going to dismiss the script pretty quickly.

Once in a great while I’ll see a feature film script submission that has double-spaced dialogue, (which is the correct format for 3-camera sitcoms but not for features.) Or I’ll see a script where the margins got fudged, the font is the wrong size,
or the dialo-
gue margins
are so thin
that you can
barely fit twel-
ve letters in a
line of dialogue.

All these glitches can burn pages faster than is normal. But I’d say rambling scenes with unneeded direction is the most common way space gets wasted in scripts.

The larger problem is not that 90 pages of this would be only 50 minutes if filmed- the real problem is that the agent or exec tosses a script like this after reading 4 pages.

To the other scenario you asked about: 50 pages for 90 minutes of script… that’s actually harder for me to imagine unless we’re talking about one of those very rare submissions that’s essentially formatted like a book manuscript:

INTERIOR, NAPOLEON’S TENT – DAY. NAPOLEON sleeps in his tent in this scene and when he wakes his friend and trusted butler GUILLAUME is at his bedside. Guillaume says “Napoleon, mister Bonaparte, Sir? It is time to wake and study the battle plans for the day, to which Napoleon says “Thank you, Guillaume, please send for Lieutenant Zut-Alors and Lieutenant Lunettes-De-Jaune that I may seek their casualty reports.” Guillaume bows and leaves the tent, leaving Monsieur Bonaparte frowning and in a desultory state of mind.

Now, this could well be a 7 minute per page pace for all I know. But the exec or agent who opens the script and sees nothing but massive blocks of text like this is likely going to not even read past the first page.

I recommend reading scripts in whatever genre you’re tackling as pace references. Whether it’s a slow, brooding scene, or a zippy comic interchange, there’s only so far off the timing can be in the performance. What is ultimately important is that the writer delivers a compelling page. Hook the exec early, keep him/her entertained, and keep a pace consistent with other scripts in your genre, and the ‘accuracy of your run time’ will be a non-factor in the script sale.

Questions From the MailBag:

Rouge Waver Hazeem sent in some really great questions and Script Departmentpartner Andrew Zinnes took a few minutes to answer them:

Question:
When screenwriting people refer to “moving the story forward” do they just mean “moving the story to the climax?” If so, how does a scene where the character fails to progress on their main goal or retreats/moves further away from it possibly “move the story forward”? How does a thematic scene move the story forward?

Andrew:
Yes, in broad terms “moving the story forward” means having the plot constantly progress until the end. There should be no scene in the film that doesn’t keep propelling the story onward. A thematic scene as you mention would help move the story along in a number of ways. The two most common would be advancing a character’s internal development or to show on a macro scale how the world the character lives in is changing or to give it context. A good example of the first comes in FARGO when Marge has drinks with that Asian man who was a friend of hers in high school. At first, we think, “Why is this scene in the film? It has nothing to do with the plot.” But when Marge learns that he has been lying to her – that he isn’t what he seems – she now thinks that Jerry (William H. Macy) might not be what he seems. Then she goes back to his car lot and all hell breaks loose. The second way is a little more difficult to explain as sometimes they come at the impetus of the director. But one that broaches it comes in PRETTY WOMAN when the homeless person at the beginning and the end of the film talks about “how we all have dreams.” He plays no part in the film plot-wise – he is merely there for theme.

Question:
A directing book of mine (still related to screenwriting) mentions that “narrative beats” need to be articulated by the director/screenwriter. These are “units that progress the narrative.” If I’m writing a scene, what is something that “progresses the narrative?” This is similar to the question above.

Andrew:
I am not 100% clear on your question, but from what you are saying, yes they are the same. My guess here is that directors (especially those that come from music videos and commercials) sometimes get hung up on creating interesting images rather than enhancing the writing and working with actors. This sounds like a warning to them to make sure you have the story coming through instead of letting the cool digital T-rex save your ass.

Question:
I’m also having trouble with the idea of what, exactly, is important information for the audience. Everything in a screenplay, since it’s motivated and somewhat relevant, can be said to be important to some degree. What information, exactly, is most relevant? The fact that my character makes mention of a family member she hasn’t visited in a while to another character is important in giving her a past relationship to make her human/real but does this information “progress the narrative”? How does Malcolm in “The Sixth Sense” failing to get his objective in the scene where he plays the “game” with Cole move the story forward? Is it because it contributes to his growth later and this growth causes him to succeed?

Andrew:
Keep this one simple thought in mind and it will help clear things up: film is a visual medium. If you can’t see it on a movie screen, then it might not be all that important. Meaning – really internal stuff about how a character is feeling is better for a novel. And yet you have to get your characters’ internal feelings out on the screen in order for them to appear three dimensional. Your question about the family member addresses this very issue.

At first blush it sounds like this might be an Act 1 beat in which case it is setting things up. Got to have a starting point if you want to move forward! If it comes in the middle then it probably is more secondary because it is telling us the character’s state of mind as they move through the story. That is how you get internal information out on the screen.

As for The 6th Sense reference – the only way Bruce Willis is going to get to the bottom of Cole’s problem and thereby solve his issue is to get Cole to trust him.
That is what the game is intended to do and if memory serves, Bruce fails to get Cole to sit down next to him. But Cole does end up liking Bruce and begins to open up to him later.

Viggo Cut to the Chase – Can You?

Cut to the chase. You’ve heard that phrase before, it’s definitely a movie-term but now it’s used colloquially to mean, in general – GET TO THE POINT ALREADY.

At the Creative Screenwriting Expo last November, I took a break and walked the exhibition hall with my friend and mentor, Lee Zahavi at Script Shark. As we marveled at all the gee-gaws available for writers, Lee looked at me and laughed – just write a good script, right?

With the strike going on, conjecture is going crazy – what will the market be like after the strike? What is like during the strike? Will the climate be harder or easier for writers looking to break in? The answer is simple. Just write a good script. And a huge determining factor of a good script is how fast you cut to the chase.

Sometimes I find myself reading a script with that growing feeling – what already?? What is this script about? Just the other day I read a script about a mother/daughter relationship and I was on page fifteen thinking, okay, enough set up already! Where is this story going? Now – if I were an executive in charge of reading or tossing that script, I would have tossed it for sure.

I have been watching a lot of movies lately – I mean A LOT – and I’ve noticed that in general, regardless of whether or not I liked the movie as a whole (okay, full disclaimer, I hated THE BUCKET LIST), the story does giddy-up within the first ten minutes or so.

Why, just this evening, I watched EASTERN PROMISES – oh Viggo – and sure enough the movie starts off with a murder and switches straight to a pregnant teen dying in childbirth. Boom. Giddyup. And so the story begins. In 3:10 to YUMA, Christian Bale’s problems are apparent and writ large almost immediately.

Maybe we all have ADD these days – certainly our lives are busier and contain more stimulation than they used to, I think that’s a given. And so current movies reflect that. Screenwriters have less time for set up – audiences like you to cut to the chase.

Make sure that the Big Idea of your script is introduced as quickly as possible. Remember, set up and backstory can happen simultaneously with moving the story forward. Prelude and backstory do not interesting script pages make. Scripts are terrific reading if you have ADD – but if your script can’t deliver on that and be more or less instantly compelling – you’re in trouble.

How do you know if you’re got too much prelude? Pull the first six (full) scenes from your opening pages and answer these questions:

Does this scene movie the story forward in a distinct way, i.e., does it have a BEAT?

Can this scene be combined with another scene?

Does this scene contain the DNA of the premise?

Another thing you might do is give your script the page ten test. Read over the first ten pages and then ask yourself:

Where is this story going?
What is the Big Idea of this story?
Have I met the main character yet?
Could I articulate what the main conflict is probably going to be?

Readers who read several scripts a week can answer those questions easily when a script is really working. Yeah sure, some genres and some scripts might need another few pages to really rev up…but it’s better to err on the side of revving up pretty quickly and elaborating and filling in along the way than to have too much prelude.

Not only audiences, but Hollywood has a serious case of ADD – reading, execs, agents – everybody. So take off your tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and set down that pipe. This is not a novel. This is blueprint for a movie. And this is an industry that can be quite brutally competitive. So – cut to the chase – why am I reading your script?