I’m currently on my third (Frankenweenie), and while the words on the page are the same as any other feature, the process is completely different. And frustrating, honestly, until you get used to it. Rob’s post walks newcomers through some of the biggest hurdles.

(Thanks to Barrett for the link.)

– Joe
New York

Do neither of the above. Rather, think about the audience sitting in the theater watching your movie. Are you actually showing them exactly the same dream sequence? If so, that sounds pointless and boring.

Much more likely — and more interesting — is that the audience is getting some new information in the subsequent dream sequences, details that would push the story forward. Something would have changed, and it’s those changes you need to show on the page.

My favorite is encajuelado:

Encajuelado: Based on the word for “trunk,” a body dumped in the trunk of a car. This is a common method for disposing of victims of a drug hit. Often, the bodies are bound and gagged with packing tape or are encobijados, wrapped in blankets.

When something is happening enough that they made a word for it, you know there’s a problem.

Ellingwood’s glossary explains that an encajuelado is sometimes accompanied by a handwritten narcomensaje, a scrawled drug message meant to threaten rival drug cartels or government security forces. Messages sometimes take the form of banners, known as narcomantas, and are hung from bridges or in other public places to demonstrate a gang’s audacity.

As a screenwriter, you have to be careful how much of this esoterica you try to use in your script. Particularly if characters are speaking English, trying to wedge a “narcomensaje” into dialogue is going to feel forced. Yet a reference to a character being encajuelado, once explained, is chilling.

Gary Whitta wrote in with his proposed moratorium: the wall of expository newspaper clippings. They’re a movie staple, but I’ve never seen one of these in real life.

However, I have in fact seen parents’ shrines to their children’s accomplishments, which is why I’m (barely) able to give myself a pass for this moment at the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

Part of the difference may literally be the framing. Newspaper clippings pinned to the wall reads as crazy/obsessive. Clippings nicely mounted and hung reads simply as pride.

Double negative points for saying something quippy after being revived.

I plead guilty, having used the “signal goes away” variation as a major element in Part Three of The Nines. (I feel both disappointment and relief to have not made the cut.)

Unlike the air duct cliché, the cell phone problem can’t be solved by a simple vow of chastity. Cell phones are real things people use every day, so ignoring them is rarely an option for a movie set present day.

Don’t write movies in which characters would call for help. That’s probably the best advice I can offer.

Seeing a movie on screen has the advantage of visual recognition in a sea of faces ( “Oh, that’s the Joe Pesci character,” “There’s the guy with the red hat again”, etc.), which obviously the written word can’t always convey, except if you go into background or descriptions every time the character shows up.

So is it okay to include a brief list of characters for a particularly complex and character-rich script?

– Liam
Paris, France

No. Never do this.

The Godfather screenplay doesn’t include a list of characters. Ditto for Lord of the Rings.

If your script is so convoluted that readers won’t be able to remember which characters are which, you need to fundamentally rethink it. A list of character names won’t help.

Yes, in some screenplays it can be tough to recall who’s who. Be nice to your readers. If you have a character who hasn’t shown up for fifty pages, it’s okay to throw a line in the scene description to remind us who he is:

When I’m reading a script that I’ll need to discuss later, one trick I’ve learned is to write down the major character names on the title page as I’m reading it, like this:

Todd – stockbroker
Brett – meth addict brother
Wallengate – Todd’s boss, narcoleptic

It’s a cheat sheet for myself, based on my reading, and helps me remember the geography of the plot when I meet with the writer. A prebaked character list wouldn’t help the same way.

1. Print it out.

There are mistakes you’re only going to catch on paper. So print it. I like to do two-up (side-by-side) printing to save paper, but your eyes might prefer full size.

Circle mistakes with a colored pen so you’ll see them. In addition to typos, look for any bit of redundant description or needless fluff. You can almost always squeeze a page out of a 120-page script.

2. Make changes all at once.

It’s tempting to fix mistakes as you catch them, but you’re likely to miss things if you’re constantly switching between error detection and error correction. Sit at the computer and go through page by page, fixing each problem you’ve found. As you go, you may spot ways to improve page breaks and other formatting niceties.

3. Fix the title page.

This is the step I often forget, resulting in mis-dated drafts and re-exported .pdfs. If I’m doing multiple versions of a draft — for example, one with starred changes, one without, I’ll make sure the title page indicates this.

4. Save this draft and email it to yourself.

Yes, you should have multiple backup strategies. But the self-addressed email will always work, and can be accessed from wherever you find yourself.

5. Export a .pdf — then check it.

These days, you almost always “hand in” a draft as a .pdf by email. But make sure it actually looks right, complete with title page. If you’re friendly with the assistant on the other end, ask her to check if there’s anything you’re at all worried might print strangely, such as a title page font¹ or starred changes in the right margins.

1. Yes, you can use a font other than Courier for the title page. But I rarely do anymore.

I’d estimate that Inglourious Basterds is less than 50 percent English, with the rest being a mix of German, French and hilariously inadequate Italian, almost all of it subtitled. District 9 uses subtitles for the Prawn, along with Afrikaans, native languages and some difficult-to-understand English.

Two movies is not a trend. But I’m noting these two success stories for the next time I’m told audiences won’t tolerate subtitles.

One other observation about District 9: It’s the first movie I can recall in which two groups could largely understand the each other’s language without being able to speak it. That is, Wikus speaks English to Christopher, who answers back in Prawn. The movie suggests that humans are physically incapable of speaking Prawn, and vice-versa. It’s an interesting choice, and helps keep the Prawn more alien.

My question is: Besides in-text quotation marks, how should I go about crediting the books referenced? Are bibliographies fairly common or allowable in the screenplay format? Or is this only necessary in academic-type publications?

I’ve searched myriad style guides but I find little regarding endnotes/references/bibliographies for screenplays. And I’d like to get it right.

– Dave
New York City

Do you hear that? That BEEP BEEP BEEP sound? That’s a metaphorical truck carefully backing out of the wrong alley you’ve driven it into.

Screenplays don’t need to cite references because they don’t quote things. Or at least, they shouldn’t. Remember: a script is really a transitional document on the way towards creating a movie. Is your film going to have footnotes? Will a bibliography be printed on the popcorn bag?

Sure, you could have a character reading aloud from a textbook:

But this would be terrible. Terrible.

In fact, I believe this can be generalized into a rule:

Any scene in which a character quotes from a real or imaginary text will be awful.

I will quickly add the Whedon corollary:

“…unless the unlikely existence of the text is part of the joke.”

Dave, the reason you’re tempted to quote articles or textbooks is that you’re desperately looking for some authority to support your ideas. But the authority needs to come from within your script, not outside. Some examples:

• In The Matrix, anything Laurence Fishburne says has authority.

• In Iron Man, Tony Stark’s suit works because the movie says it does.

• In Up, a bunch of helium balloons can lift a house because it’s charming, damnit.

Cut those quotes. Let characters say what they need to say in their own voices.

I got a lot of replies, but one name that kept coming up was Michael Mann. He consistently finds ways to send thousands of bullets flying while acknowledging the rules of physics.¹

I haven’t seen Public Enemies yet, but this clip shows the feeling he creates:

But when you’re talking about Michael Mann gunfights, you really have to discuss Heat. Here’s the showstopper:

I looked up Mann’s screenplay for Heat, to see what that looked like on the page.

Mann uses a lot of sluglines and short sentences to create the tempo of the fight. It’s chaos, and that’s reflected in the writing. He’s inconsistent with scene headers, and not especially concerned with establishing geography.

It doesn’t matter: action writing needs to create the feeling of an action sequence, not choreograph each bullet.

For another example of scripting a gunfight, I’d point you back to the Alaska pilot. You can see the gunfight here, and read the script in the Library.

1. I have nothing against impossible gunfights like in The Matrix, Equilibrium or Wanted, but I’m trying to keep to keep this one a bit more grounded.