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DivisionPost posted:Is there a reason why we need to see him move? Your story's about an North American expatriate who gets involved with a complicated woman. Why is his reason for moving pertinent to the reader/audience? Yeah, deciding to move and leaving the country isn't the inciting incident -- meeting and falling for this woman is. (Assuming that it's the story of their relationship, and not the story of his trip to Europe.)
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Jul 11, 2013 05:44
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Mike Works posted:And Max: Save your gold for Maureen's workshops! HOLY poo poo WHO ARE YOU HOW DID YOU FIND ME Oh, hi Mike
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Jul 11, 2013 07:01
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Mike Works posted:I'm using The Hangover as a comparable, and it seems the night/blackout/wtfmorning transition hits around (pg 15). Sorry for the double post, but I was curious about this and ended up tracking down the script of The Hangover. The blackout occurs on page 13 -- but note that the movie opens with a two-page in medias res flash-forward, and even once we return to the present, the guys are on their way to Vegas before we've even hit the end of page 5. Edit: Of course, that leads to a movie where all the drama stems from what happens in Vegas. We don't care about the guys' home lives (except for maybe Stu, but only because he's coupled with a shrewish caricature); we care about learning what happened while they were partying. You can take time to build up the contrast of the guy's unhappy life in his home country, but then that has to be the central conflict of the story. Having his love interest turn out to be an assassin could sustain its own movie, and as a subplot it'll overpower a more subtle and nuanced main plot. So I guess what I'm trying to say is listen to this guy: Fire Safety Doug posted:I think you might need to spend some time thinking about your basic premise. Is it East Meets West or Help, My Dream Girl Is An Assassin? If it's the former, then you can spend the entire first act in the US and explore the new world in the first half of act 2 (although you still want to introduce the girl). If it's the latter, then you could even start in Asia and have the girl's appearance be the inciting incident. Either way, pick one story and stick with it. emgeejay fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 08:11
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Just FYI, the proper term for this is in medias res, which is often followed by a lengthy flashback.
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Oct 4, 2013 06:18
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Loki_XLII posted:Thanks for the replies! What are some good places to find scripts? I'm looking through that simply scripts site you linked, are their other good ones? A lot of the links from early in the thread seem dead, or at least have a pretty limited selection. Daily Script is a good one, and you don't have to sort out which are screenplays and which are (useless) DVD subtitle transcripts.
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Dec 15, 2013 12:54
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bushisms.txt posted:I had to take a class to figure this out, but write the script like the person already knows everything. It's not a novel, it's a map. The script is literally so everyone is on the same page. I had to rewrite my first script after figuring this out. Most people tell you to just look at other scripts, but that teaches dick all, so either get a screenwriting class or a veteran screenwriter who is patient with you. In a shooting script, maybe. But in a spec script, I think kicks forts should focus on writing what the audience is meant to see and experience. If it's important to the story that the audience not recognize this character until the ending, his identity should be kept "secret" in the script until then.
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Jan 8, 2014 21:18
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Twisted Perspective posted:Send me a PM. Me too.
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Jan 17, 2014 20:00
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How green are you when it comes to writing screenplays, specifically? Do you know the style and the formatting? I'm no psychic. I don't know how this will turn out for you. But I'd never try to talk someone out of writing a screenplay, if only because practice makes perfect*... *avoid clichés like this one in your screenplay
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Jan 21, 2014 06:07
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Haymaker_Betty posted:That sounds awesome. I should just email scripts to them, every day, no matter how bad they are, in the hopes that they, like my old boss, get annoyed and buy one. They don't buy scripts, they're a union of professional writers.
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Jan 26, 2014 08:31
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These are all pretty good, but the protagonist could use a better verb than either "suffers wrath" or "endures wrath"
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Mar 6, 2014 09:48
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Mike Works posted:Completely random question: You could probably get away with "An Aladdin cartoon." There might be even be one in the public domain. Disney's Aladdin? Probably not. Zooming in on the subtitles sounds like an awkward and confusing solution, even if it's absolutely imperative that your character must be reading the exact lines from Disney's® Aladdin™.
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Mar 18, 2014 07:54
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Mike Works posted:There's no dialogue at all except for the narrator, who I suppose could reference the movie/lines/scenes either directly or indirectly. If I were you, I'd compromise by cutting it down to the barest visual elements you can afford to source or create yourself. (IE: 200 frames of kinda crappy animation, or 20 frames of pretty nice-looking illustration -- assuming that you're going to be the one shooting this, and on a shoestring)
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Mar 18, 2014 10:27
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Zypher posted:Specific music cues are something that a number of professional screenwriters include in their scripts. I'm not a fan of it myself, but I wouldn't call it a major student move. I would. It's telling, not showing, and that's if your reader's even heard the song. If they haven't heard it, it's meaningless to them. quote:If your script is good, it's more fun than "Big Band swing plays from below". "Big Band swing plays from below" is perfect. I read that and immediately heard Sing, Sing, Sing in my head. Didn't know what it was called, but it set the scene instantly. Whereas putting this in your screenplay: quote:Down below, the band plays Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing" ...would be a real bad idea, because how am I supposed to know what that song title sounds like?
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Mar 18, 2014 20:29
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quote:It's on the same level as describing a character by saying "think Kristen Wiig."
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Mar 18, 2014 21:22
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Call Me Charlie posted:What about a montage? That seems like it would be a scenario where it's better to just name the song you're thinking of instead of doing something generic like "fast rock music plays" Well if you're already resorting to a montage...
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Mar 19, 2014 01:26
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mechacop posted:If anyone is interested, I have a short film screenplay written a year ago. It's about a guy throwing a costume party at his friend's place that gets out of hand. It deals with the themes of loss and fitting back into the social scene after a traumatic event. Things that I was struggling with at the time. Keep in mind, it could use a second or third rewrite since it's over a year old. I'd appreciate some feedback. It's not terrible. Having the amorous couple horn in on Paul's territory is a good way of spurring him to leave his zone of comfort. I liked the "I'm… Jewish?" line. The setup is laborious -- it shouldn't take three pages to get to the party in a barely eight-page script. Your descriptive passages are way too verbose, the Minecraft reference is too specific, and someone's already mentioned that "tranny" is both offensive and redundant. There are a lot of passages where you shift into the passive voice ("the door is knocked on") rather than the active voice ("they knock on the door"). If this is indeed a story about "a guy throwing a costume party at his friend's place that gets out of hand," then the party isn't getting far enough out of control. Somebody eats Paul's special cereal and Greg drinks too much. Consider that the party only lasts for two pages, which is one page less than the amount of time it took to set up the party in the first place. Why was Greg drinking hard lemonades when he was so excited about the keg a couple pages before? Don't even get me started on putting Slender Man into this thing. I find the lead characters generally unpleasant, even when Paul opens up at the end -- because he still does it in a crass way. And meanwhile the big laugh line ending the whole thing is Paul calling Greg a human being for daring to show emotion. It's better to devise a genuinely awkward or intense situation than to just throw an "intense silence" or "awkward cough" into the action descriptions. It needs basic proofreading. And just generally speaking, because in the end this turns out to be the linchpin of the whole script: why does Greg make Paul put on his dead sister's dress? Why does Paul go along with it? How does that decision complicate or enrich the drama/comedy beyond just "having your main character in a dress now"? At present, absolutely nothing about the party scene would be any different if Paul were just wearing his own clothes. You need a better reason to get him into his dead sister's dress than to make tranny jokes, take a hard swerve into sentimentality, and then call the guy a human being.
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May 13, 2014 22:13
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jimcunningham posted:How the gently caress do I come up with a tagline thats not super lame and cliche? Do you mean logline?
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May 26, 2014 22:15
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Slim Killington posted:Little actions during thought or dialogue breaks are a director's job, not something you'd want to write into a script. He lights a cigarette. Just make sure they're more interesting than breathing. Of course, that should be true of every action in your script. quote:"He thinks for a moment" is about what I'd say, and I wouldn't worry about how often I did it.
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May 30, 2014 20:06
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You don't want to micro-manage a performance, but showing the reader an action will always be stronger than baldly relaying something that's internalized. Writing "he realizes" or "she thinks" is a poor choice when you can have your characters dig out an overlooked piece of evidence or chew on a Bic pen.
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May 30, 2014 21:39
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hotsoupdinner posted:Digging out an overlooked piece of evidence works because it's a statement that an actor can interpret and it reads well on the page, but chewing on a pen? That's extremely micro-managing things and is exactly what readers and directors hate. Bear in mind that the alternative being put forward is to tell the actor to think. Movies are built on visual action. Thinking is for statues.
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May 30, 2014 22:58
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screenwritersblues posted:I'm curious to see if anyone wants to read a beat sheet that I just finished. Yes.
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Aug 15, 2014 21:23
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Lethemonster posted:I got my read over back from PoshAlligator and it was very helpful and polite. I know some people are concerned about getting things looked at that goons will be mean and snarky but he was just useful and thorough. I'll give it a look-over if you still want more feedback. Feel free to PM me.
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Sep 19, 2014 17:36
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In theory, the pricing weeds out the people who aren't ready for it. If you want to submit to The Black List, it's in your best interest to have re-written, proof-read, re-written, re-written, and re-written. It's probably the best and most well known reading service at the moment, and if you get a high score from your readers the potential exposure is highly valuable. But you've got to be ready, or you'll get a 6/10 and feel like you've wasted your money. There have been some complaints about the quality of notes, but that seems like a vocal minority, and the company seems good about responding to feedback.
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Dec 19, 2014 22:40
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Read Dan Harmon's series on story structure. Start with the first one. He makes the case that humans naturally respond to stories that follow a certain circular pattern: a character is in a zone of comfort, but wants something. He enters an unfamiliar world to seek it out, adapts to his new circumstances, finds what he's looking for but pays for it somehow, and then returns to the beginning -- having changed.quote:If you were hired to write a script for a race of super-evolved spiders, you might find that they prefer a more linear model. In the spider version of Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack might build his own beanstalk, find a sandwich at the top of it, eat some and save some for later. The End. That's not really inspiring to us. We like us some circles.
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Aug 23, 2015 15:41
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Alan_Shore posted:It's not the film title, it's three cards that introduce the short film. One sentence each. Then we start the movie. Are you worried we're going to steal your rad logline? You should present the titles in whatever way makes them most effective and interesting. That's hard to judge when you redact all specific information from your questions.
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Sep 13, 2016 04:38
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