Beyond serious

This weeks screenwriting lesson for me, from Pilar's podcast (search podcasts for 'on the page' in iTunes), squares exactly with Scriptshadow's judgement of this line.

The lesson is 'get enough words to produce a vivid sense*, and then you're done'.  Sentences are nice, but a lot of life and film is not done in them, and a serious, careful, complete sentence or four to describe some action, is bad writing for a movie. The script is a prospectus for a million-dollar project, but you don't get to have flashy graphs, artful color scheme and cheese. Sadly, money is not a keen reader.  It gets eye strain and annoyance really easily. It doesn't even do its own reading, so the eyestrain and annoyance have to be felt vicariously by other people without money, like me.

Let's look at some amateur writing (me.  It's me, mum.) As there's only a paragraph, and my posts are usually way longer, you probably have trouble seeing 4.5 lines as a chore.  You have to imagine reading this after reading it 800 times (its an eighth of a page, say, and a screenplay runs about 100 pages), and its only ten in the morning, and you've got eight more scripts to read.

To intro - Reeves is an old man who has been dismantling himself under the influence of a chem**.

Reeves looks down, and starts to squeal with fear and horror.  The medic places a mask over his face against his terrified shaking of his head.  He eventually relaxes, recognizing his powerlessness.  His eyes dart terrified from face to face.

How should I have written that?  Well,
a. I don't know.  That's the main thing about me.  But
b. I can tell better from worse.  Maybe.

Reeves sees himself - 

- he writhes, squeals.   

The Medic FIGHTS - masking him. 

He snaps it on - gas floods Reeves.

His thrashing subsides - eyes dart terrified from face to face.

Better?  Maybe a bit, but there still isn't flow.  The test is, are you beyond serious? Is your skill so built up, so bedded down, that you can write like you're rapping, lyrically flowing from moment to moment, giving just the sense.  Seriousness can get you so far, but you have to get the serious into the background and just leave a vivid, emotional whole.


* Gottlob Frege reference
** A Chemical, but also the script you put in the head of a Golem.