The best I could hope, of course, was that he’d find someone who’d tell him pretty much the same things I did. Unfortunately — and to paraphrase P.T. Barnum — there will be two to take him, charge him much more and tell him that he’s brilliant. The film will never get made… and, sadly, the Wally’s of the world will never understand why.
SCREENWRITER’S CHECKLIST
If you decide to get a professional evaluation of your work, the following things should be taken into consideration.
What are your expectations of the critique? (i.e., an evaluation of your strengths and weaknesses, a referral to a studio or agent, a mentoring relationship.)
What are the qualifications of the consultant who will be reviewing your script? What do others have to say about the quality of their work?
What can you afford to spend on script coverage? Since fees range from less than $100 to over $1,000, it pays to shop around.
What kind of timeframe is involved between submission and receipt of a coverage document? (Note: If you’re planning to enter the script into competition, allow at least 4-6 weeks in order to have the coverage done and address the recommended changes.)
Do you need the entire script reviewed or just a few scenes that you feel are cumbersome? Some consultants, such as myself, will do mini-appraisals that not only save you money but enable you to assess whether you could have a comfortable relationship.
How well do you feel you handle criticism?
Are there provisions in place for follow-up questions with the consultant after receipt of his/her critique of your script?
Is the consultant amenable to second-reads of the same material at either a reduced fee or gratis?
AUTHOR, KNOW THY SCRIPT
Before you engage a professional consultant to analyze your work, there are some standard questions that you will probably be asked. The form I developed for my own clients is one that not only clues me in on the storyline and the author’s background but has application to his/her future submissions to producers and competitions. Just as mock interviews are excellent practice for landing your future dream job, being able to articulate the scope and commercial appeal of your screenplay and soliciting a professional’s advice forms a good foundation for future pitch sessions.
A copy of this form follows so you can start polishing the answers that will help your screenplay shine.
PRELIMINARY SCRIPT COVERAGE
QUESTIONNAIRE
Client Name:
Address:
Phone Number:
Best time to reach you:
E-mail Address:
Title of Project:
Type of Project: Screenplay Novel Theater Script
Genre:
Target Audience:
Is your project: Completed In Progress
Logline:
Synopsis (100 words or less):
Is your material: Original Adapted from Another Source
For films and plays only, what is your estimated production budget:
In 100 words or less, please describe what makes this story unique, timely, and commercial for today’s market:
What specific areas do you feel you need the most assistance with?
What specific strengths do you feel you bring to this project?
Please list previous publishing/performance/production credits:
Anything else I should know about you?
CHAPTER 13: THE ART OF CONVERSATION
For as many conversations as we engage in every day — and as many more as we eavesdrop on — it’s not always easy to duplicate that kind of energy, flow, and realism in a screenplay. Why? Because in this craft we so love called Art Imitating Life, we forget that life can play itself out in real time whereas the art of a feature length film is restricted to a scant two hours. Conversations with our friends, lovers, and children which can meander endlessly until they finally get to a point are the kiss of death when translated verbatim to the screen.
Too often someone who would be better suited to writing novels or short stories tries to put words in the mouths of live actors. It’s a dead giveaway when a writer doesn’t know what he/she is doing. Why? Because (1) the characters all talk exactly the same way, (2) they talk more eloquently than normal people, or (3) they talk way too much.
By simply learning to be a better listener, you can make your characters better conversationalists. This chapter shows you how.
THE SEDUCTION OF SOUND
Stand-up comics have long known that words containing g’s, k’s, p’s, and q’s are funnier than other words, especially if they’re also coupled with repetition and shuffled letters (i.e., bass ackwards). Romance novelists rely heavily on words that begin with sl’s, sm’s, wh’s and plenty of oo’s (literally and figuratively) in the middle. One needs only to observe the lips/tongue action intrinsic to these combinations to see why they’re so often used.
Technical writers, on the other hand, prefer multisyllabic words that favor b’s, d’s, r’s, and Latin suffixes. There’s an off-putting hardness and complexity to scientific dissertations because — well, quite frankly, they’re not supposed to be easily understood by regular, workaday people.
In concert with these common patterns is the power of short-vowel sounds versus long-vowel sounds. Consider the difference, for example, between Indiana Jones retorting, “Now you’re just getting nasty” and “Now you’re just getting mean.” Though both of them ascribe inappropriate behavior to the enemy, the “á” tone in the first one is harsher than the more soothing “ee” sound in the second. Accordingly, which one packs more punch? Never use a limp word when a stronger/sexier/funnier one would be more potent. And don’t forget that the physical order of lines not only impacts cadence but weight. Compare:
“My mother was a hooker. You go with what you’ve got.”
“You go with what you’re got. My mother was a hooker.”
DELIVERY TIMES
Have you ever noticed that villains communicate more slowly and seductively than those who are trying to thwart them? Their time-clocks, after all, are completely different from those of the protagonists; they have the luxury of an adagio pace because, presumably, they are entirely too smart to be caught up with and, thus, have an ample head start.
Meanwhile, the good guys are operating at prestissimo because their lives and Western Civilization depend on it. This is reflected in shorter words, shorter lines, and a lower level of abstraction. Villains often embroider their speech with analogies to classic literature, philosophy, and antiquities, as well. Again it’s because they’ve had the free time to read up on all of this while the hero was busy just trying to round up a posse.
Vocal variation and tempo can best be illustrated with a home stereo system. If you happen to have one with a bass and treble digital display, compare the difference between an evening “mellow sounds” DJ and a caffeine turbo-charged one who hosts the morning commute. Enlist friends to tape-record one of your own scenes and watch it being played back. Not only are you striving for definitive pacing in the speech patterns of the characters but a melange of energy flow within the scenes themselves.
THE ART OF CROSS-TALK CHIT-CHAT
Dialogue is a dance in which both characters are simultaneously trying to lead. What keeps the audience fixated and alert is the fact that even what seems like casual chit-chat is an artful cross-talk in which (1) questions are answered with other questions and (2) answers contain subtext that fuel the fires of controversy. Skillful dialogue can also be likened to a vigorous tennis game where the objective is to keep the opponent off-balance by returning the ball as quickly as one receives it.
As much as you want to keep your audiences on their toes, however, you don’t want to confuse them by incorporating multiple ideas within one speech or scene. Let them absorb whatever it is they’re supposed to learn in Conversation #1, then move on to Conversation #2, much like a progressive dinner allows the guests to savor and understand everything about the appetizer
s before they move on to the next house that’s serving the soup or salad. Just as the sum of the entire meal addresses the central theme of hunger, the sum of interaction among your characters revolves around the resolution of the story’s central question.
NOT WITHOUT PURPOSE
Film dialogue serves four main functions:
To reveal character,
To advance the plot,
To explain the past, and
To articulate feelings that can’t be conveyed visually.
If your characters’ conversations aren’t accomplishing one or more of the above, cut them out! Unlike the rambling chatter we engage in every day with family and friends, “screen talk” needs to have a good reason to be there. Ideally, it also should serve more than just one purpose at a time.
For instance, let’s say you have a protagonist who admits, “I’ve been terrified of the water — even wading pools — ever since I saw my cousin drown in the Hudson when I was a kid.”
This line:
Reveals that he/she is vulnerable,
Suggests that water will make an unbidden appearance somewhere in this story and force the protagonist to confront his/her fears,
Explains the source of the fear, in addition to establishing familial and geographical connections, and
Expresses what otherwise only could be shown in a flashback.
POETRY IN MOTION
One of the things I’ve noticed in my work as a coverage consultant is that younger writers per se, have a harder time mastering the art of cadence than writers of my own generation. Why? Because the study of poetry in public schools has significantly waned over the past 25 years. Anyone who has ever struggled to rhyme just the right word to fit a specific metre is head and shoulders above the “lyrically challenged” who are averse to massaging their prose for flow and economy.
If a character’s monologue doesn’t trip smoothly off the tongue, try to approach it as if it were a poem or a song. Once you’ve crafted the syncopated version of what you want to say, substitute selected words or phrases with others that contain the same number of syllables. For example:
You told me it was just a lark
This complicated mess
And yet your car was double-parked
Outside that slut’s address.
VANESSA
You told me it was just a fling. You begged me to forgive. And then I see you—big as life—outside that slut’s address!
THE CRITICAL DOs AND DON'Ts OF DIALOGUE
Be wary of the Party Syndrome. This is the phenomenon whereby writers feel compelled to painstakingly have their characters come into a room for the first time and get introduced to everyone else who is already there. Unless it actually is a party or meeting where such introductions would be natural, find other ways to convey their identities to your audience. Try this baker’s dozen for variety:
Office phone calls (either outgoing or incoming)
Name tags (for those in service professions)
Office titles on doors
Reservations at a restaurant
Parties/business scenarios whereby introductions are natural
Third-party remarks prior to arrival
CUs of correspondence opened by addressee
Speaking engagements in which he/she is introduced to a group
Soliloquies where characters talk to themselves (use sparingly)
VOs which book-end the film or run continuously throughout
Job interviews or blind-date set-ups
Paging (effective in hospital scenes)
Newspaper/magazine match-cuts.
Avoid long monologues unless they’re pertinent to the character or plot. If a character has something lengthy to say, break it up with interruptions from his/her listeners or bits of business/action. One of the analogies I like to use in workshops relates to the selection process by which people read magazine and newspaper articles. Are you more likely to be attracted to one which is a series of short paragraphs or one which goes on and on without any discernible breaks? Prospective producers read things the same way, preferring the readability of bite-size dialogue chunks and lots of white space.
Are your characters talking more to each other or to the audience as a contrivance to “fill them in?” Never let your characters explain things in explicit detail to each other that, presumably, they each already know.
Speaking of realism, always enlist an impromptu “cast” to read your scenes out loud after you have written them. This will reveal:
If your sentences are so long that the actors could not conceivably take a big enough breath to deliver them.
If you’ve used too many "s's" or combinations that make for outrageous tongue-twisters.
If you’ve accounted for the fact that most people speak in fragments, use slang, and get interrupted.
If you’ve used words to convey what could be better communicated through body language and facial expressions. If you’ve used phrases which look perfectly fine in print but which, if spoken, would cast a different meaning? The following lines were taken from actual scripts some of my students turned in. Read them out loud and you’ll see what I mean:
“Running Bear will keep you safe.”
“The prints showed me something I’d never seen before.”
“I’m used to being chased.”
“Uranus is really underrated.”
“The boos drowned out my speech.”
“Have you seen my beau?”
“I was nearly killed by a boar.”
“If we’re quick, we can catch a ferry.”
“I need all the seamen you can give me.”
“We got back to the zoo but it was too late. The rhino had already been poached.”
AND FINALLY, A WORD ABOUT DIALECTS
Voracious reader that I am, there were quite a few pages of Gone with the Wind that I opted to skip when it first fell into my hands in high school. No, it wasn’t because I wanted to see what Scarlett and Rhett would do next (oh, all right, maybe it was partly because of that). Nor was it because I already knew how the Civil War came out and thought all of the expositional battle scenes were tedious.
The real reason is that I got vexed with the phonetically illustrative Southern dialect because it slowed the momentum, forcing me to concentrate on the pronunciation of individual words instead of the flow of emotions being evoked. That same vexation surfaced years later when I encountered Diana Gabaldon’s Scottish time-travel novels about the star-crossed lovers, Jamie and Claire. Passionate as I am about Highland history (I got married in a Scottish castle), the author’s good intentions to capture the texture of a good brogue became cumbersome when spread over too many pages.
This may seem like an odd remark coming from someone who not only spent two decades in theater but learned to master a number of useful and/or exotic dialects in the process. Wouldn’t I want to know how to convincingly mimic a foreign tongue? As an actress, yes. As a reader, no. And readers are generally the ones who will have the first look at your script.
Rather than slog down the pace by trying to phonetically capture the pronunciation of foreign/regional characters in your script, concentrate on their colloquial expressions and speech patterns instead. Above all, be consistent if you’re attempting a style of lingo that differs from the one you were born with. Nothing looks worse than going from, “Yo, Theo, whassup, bro?” on the first page to the same character remarking three pages later, “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced to one another.”
Could It Be a Movie Page 17