10 hints for index cards
I’m outlining a project right now, and thought it would be a good time to review best practices for index cards.
Keep it short. Maximum seven words per card.
A card represents a story point, be it a scene or a sequence. You don’t need a card for every little thing.
Keep cards general enough that they can be rearranged. (“Battle in swamp” rather than “Final showdown”)
Horizontal (a table or counter) often works better than a vertical (a corkboard).
Post-It notes make good alternative index cards.
Consider a letter code for which characters are featured in the sequence. Helpful for figuring out who’s missing.
Most movies can be summarized in less than 50 cards.
Cards are cheap. Don’t hesitate to rework them.
Consider a second color for action sequences. Helps show the pacing.
Write big. You want to be able to read them from a distance.
39 Responses to “10 hints for index cards”
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February 3rd, 2010 at 6:24 am
You don’t happen to have a picture of, say, the Charlie’s Angels 2 index cards spread out somewhere, do you? The hints sound good but I always get a better idea of everything when I actually see what it could look like. :)
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:00 am
Is there a digital equivalent to index cards, or is the ability to physically shuffle around cards by hand the great advantage of the system?
February 3rd, 2010 at 8:58 am
I’d imagine that the iPad would be great for what you are suggesting, Constantine.
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:00 am
Step 11: Don’t forget to recycle!
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:25 am
Thanks for the tips & reminders. These things really help keep us on track. Appreciate it!
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:31 am
@Constantine: I know that celtx (free, open-source script-writing software) includes virtual index cards that can be re-ordered.
Rob
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:36 am
GREAT! — Noooow he tells us… :P
http://www.strangehyacinth.com/mediadump/indexcards/cards1.jpg
http://www.strangehyacinth.com/mediadump/indexcards/cards2.jpg
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:01 am
Constantine,
The reason most digital index card apps people are about to throw at you don’t work is that, the apps don’t know what a story point is. – They decide that each INT./EXT. SLUG LINE is a CARD, which is pretty much useless. For one, you don’t want to read slugs to get the meaning of the card, and second, you don’t want to read the scene to get the meaning of the card… what you want is a tactile experience using huge text to say what info you’re providing in that sequence to the audience: “BOOTH SHOOTS LINCOLN”, with a way to SET ASIDE cards on a sidebar that you’re temporarily cutting, and a FLUSH button that sends a snapshot of it to your email. – I’m sure you’ll see it soon. But its not necessarily to be celebrated, since the cards are pretty much our only nostalgic and tactile method of molding the clay, and it feels like stop-motion animation. Its UNDENIABLY the superior form for soundboarding and bouncing through-lines off of any others in the room, since its exactly the same technology used to teach you your shapes on Sesame Street… and the truth is, a lot of us aren’t really dying to give our last pre-digital, pre-analog, mechanical & human interface up. The 10,000 guys on the laptops at Starbucks however, quite possibly are.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:13 am
I’m not saying I won’t buy it. – I’ll buy it instantly just to support the code monkeys, but I’ll do it knowing full well that my next screenplay will still have a 6 foot cork board in my living room.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:15 am
I live in Scotland, and all people do in Starbucks here is drink coffee and complain about coffee.
On the subject of index cards – does every/most working screenwriter use them, or are they something of an acquired taste?
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:37 am
I didn’t use index cards but did a similiar process in laying out my projects. In my case, “digitizing” the index cards was about not only removing the physical cards but the cards themselves. You just have to keep in mind what the index cards represent, what you’re actually writing on them, and how they’re used.
Basically, I wrote out the beats (whatever would be written on an index card) in a document on the computer (I use a text editor called TextPad for files like this) so each line of text becomes a psuedo index card. Then, I just read through the beats and imagined what happened in each as I went. I didn’t really notate anything special like action, but that sounds like a good idea. If anything needs reworked, its pretty easy to copy/paste a line of text up or down or anywhere you might want it; even having a seperate list for beats you might be removing or not sure where they’ll end up.
I also backed up these files and documented changes in case things ended up a huge mess and I needed to go back a few iterations.
Most importantly though is finding what ever way works best for you and use that.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:58 am
Wow! Simple, clever, and the first screenwriting related post of the year. I smell a Kodak moment.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:00 am
@Constantine: a pretty good digital equivalent in my opinion is “Storylines” which comes as a part of “Writers’ Café”:
http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:18 am
I use Supernotecards (http://www.mindola.com/) a software based index card solution.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:30 am
Synthian,
Thanks for posting your pictures. Out of curiosity, what do the red X’s represent?
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:39 am
There’s the Save the Cat software, works well for scripts and a few other note card apps. As mentioned most of the screenwriting packages get it wrong. They view a card equal to one scene.
Instead of cork board I tend to use a piece of foam core. Lighter and custom size with a knife.
Check out the index cards from 3M Post-Its. Stick on to walls even without cork board. They also make cards that can be stacked, reshuffled and stuck on walls or other surfaces.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:41 am
As for number five, a lot of sticky note companies now make 3×5 sized ones that I absolutely love. They’re all over my walls.
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:46 pm
I’m using different colors, too. Orange for inciting incidents, plot points (important changes), white for general scenes, yellow for first act, green for third act, pink for female characterization, blue for male characterization. Helps pretty well ; )
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Scrivener (Mac only) supports index cards/story beats in a good way.
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:21 pm
I
m not going to start preaching why psychiatric pills kills no matter situation... And how much i dont like hypnotists doing theyre new found skill-sets in movies they write. Cameron didnt have heart – attack warnings at his film neither. And cars kill too. moving on: I loved synthians wall. Mine was simular without the mask.February 3rd, 2010 at 6:01 pm
I was thinking it was well suited to the iPad. I’m feeling that the general consensus is that the system of actually using post-its or a corkboard is better then any kind of digital index card system.
To go a tad off topic: would you start making up index cards before or after you have the plot worked out? Is the index card approach more about structure and pacing then the actual plot?
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:11 pm
@ Travis,
The board you’re looking at is a long-form biography so the GIANT PINK Xs represent a “So-many-years-later” moment. Its an actor change wherein we’re not going to be seeing that incarnation of our hero anymore. They’re the landmark turning points we all want to get to.
Think of it as Mein Kampf, or, “Serge”, (the guy who wrote Peter and the Wolf) – You want to see him in boarding school when the Communist flag is first raised outside the classroom window and the THEME of the Wolf first enters his mind. – Then you no longer need that child because once we’ve heard what he heard as a child, we “get” him.
A small pink X is: “You’ve written this scene & its nailed down. Move on.” – And a Post-It is a FLAG representing a rewrite, or rather a, “Dude, you have problems.”
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:16 pm
& I do apologize for the purposely blurred image. – I really wish I could just throw it right out there as a petri dish of observance. — & that’s an interesting idea… best I just document them in evolution and do a post mortem on the subject when its funeral comes.
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:35 pm
I use a digital note cards — well, actually Post-it digital notes. You can get the software on line for around $20. This has the added benefit of taking your note cards with you.
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:55 pm
@ DavidPMcGinty,
Oh we’ve got a whole different sub-culture for it here… you can walk into almost any Starbucks and usually find this archetypal set of two guys in what a couple people I know call, “The Silverlake Uniform” (an artist-rich area of town, not so much chav clothing as it is Vespa Scooter chic) hovered over a laptop with a sort of Pineapple-Express glow. – Sometimes up to 6 scripts in germination in a single joint… (Yes, I’ve actually raised a glass and asked.) …and the laymen don’t know this, but often screenwriters do: You’ve walked too close to the mother’s den if the laptop turns a little 45, to protect its hibernating babies from any would-be invaders in the wild.
@ek – Will explore :) Thanks!
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:59 pm
here’s a silly question: do you order them horizontally, left to right, or vertically, like a film strip (I just dated myself). I’ve done both.
February 4th, 2010 at 2:26 am
Synthian,
That’s interesting, thanks for the insight into your process.
Great depiction of the Silverlake crowd, btw. But surely they’re no worse than the ones who write at House of Pies.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:44 am
I used to use 5×8 cards for sequences, but that was before I found Movie Outline. Now I can put all of my outline in the same file as the script. I had a stack of outlines that were flowing everywhere, now I can write as much or as little as I want and not have to search through stacks of cards.
February 4th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Constantine,
“would you start making up index cards before or after you have the plot worked out? Is the index card approach more about structure and pacing then the actual plot?”
No, not before or after… The cards ARE the incarnation of working the plot out.
You know how before you write, you’ve got a trailer in your head? – Well, you know a couple of things in your movie that NEED to happen, in order to get you your trailer shots right? – And if you’re like me, you’ve got a poster shot that includes the most inevitable elements of your film coming into a single microcosmic-yet-unavoidable symbol in a moment that the 2.39:1 aspect ratio was made for. – So you take your giant mixing kettle, (your cork board)… and you take your roughly 5-20 magical and unavoidable elements, and you cross yourself and you throw um up on the board. And you ask yourself… “Alright… how do I get from nowhere… to here?” And those five cards are your, “babies”. The things you always will fight for, but inevitably will lose as you see your world take a form that involves the law: “To only include what is necessary.” And you’ll watch it develop tough skin & mutations to protect its existence at the sacrifice of your babies that once you knew you could never do without. – And you fight to keep it short & include them, and find out that your first draft is 170 pages long… and then get out your vorpal sword because, its baby killin’ time. –> Then you read John August’s magnus about: HOW TO CUT PAGES:
http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/how-to-cut-pages
And you realize– The cards serve several purposes:
One is to remind you through the presence of those ever unremovable shining first cards, that you still have a vision, of what you set out to do, and to bribe you in your negotiations with the universe, to simplify, and to bring your babies back.
Cork boards aren’t just a self satisfaction thing. – Its also a tradition held by your employers, and an expected experience for you to have in your Bat Belt as a storyteller.
One of the major pieces of screenwriting education history that will help you understand this tradition as an eternal maya is the article called “The Wind Up, and the Pitch” by Terry Rossio, which contains the phrase, “Then Spielberg walked in to the room, saw the board, and immediately said, ‘This is great. This is how all movies should be pitched.’”
http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp11.Wind-up.and.Pitch.html
Who’s the masta’! – Sho-nuff.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Yo @ Synthian, you got an essay worked out for us here. Thanks dude.
To help with structure, what I did was post it-and I put them on sheets of paper (standard size: A4)- on the floor, before I took them up on the wall. It was useful to me making a circle for the particular script I wrote.
I
m so lucky having all these writers sharing secrets here-and its really cool doing the same as someone on the other side of the planet. Thanks again.February 5th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
@Synthian: Love that post! You’re right on the money I think. In fact I’m now fired up to try my hand at index card-ing my current script.
(btw. anyone got any suggestions for the verb form of the process? how about ‘boarding’?)
February 6th, 2010 at 11:47 am
it`s put together. You need cool pieces in a setting for a story making alot of people interested in spending 2 hours just with your story. and presenting. maybe packaging, and ejecting is pretty cool.
-But just putting a story together is very hard work. making a film is a PHD in film. You need the prep work to putting yourself as the star in your own story writing a selling script. haha. ;=)
And I like boarding.
February 6th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Thanks a lot for this. I have so much trouble with my outlines.
February 7th, 2010 at 12:30 am
Colored cards are handy for lots of things. Characters, storylines (if you’re cutting across stories), types of scenes. Basically, any time you want to think about discrete parts of your screenplay.
In television, we use the colored cards to show what each character is doing in a given week. When put on the wall, it gives a great view of the arc of each character week to week. But that same process can apply to a screenplay.
February 7th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
the coolest scripts right now must be going: turn right light slightly to the left while spinning sircles of metal around it and put a shining star-ish edge to it lasting two seconds and fading. then go to second layer in the picture and zoom it. #8500
February 12th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
hey nick, that comment was awesome. -i think maybe it`s learning the method. By writing, well, at least one film on cards. and try out the system. -you should be able to remember structure in your head after that, and get the idea behind planning and tha slopes. I usually write conversations and have the plot and main story figured out before that, making it as easy as possible puzzle.
with the reading genius course, it could be possible remembering all the 50 cards.
February 15th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
FEWER than 50 cards.
You’re a writer for fuck’s sake.
February 16th, 2010 at 12:00 am
INDEX CARDS IN AN IPHONE?
Hi, just if someone is interested. I’ve just got this amazing iphone application called iSpeech Cards, which is basically an app to create iphone “index” cards for your speeches, lectures, reminders’ etc. You can say goodbye to cardboard and become more ecologically-oriented LOL. It’s worth a try. If you want it, here’s the link guys!
http://www.niftybean.com/ispeechcards
February 16th, 2010 at 9:49 am
@doinel:
Fewer vs. Less is a shibboleth. They have been used interchangeably since the dawn of English:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less