As someone pointed out — and many others have discovered — the Archives link on the right is broken. Click it and you’ll get a bunch of MySQL gibberish, which is actually the result of a few PHP commands that aren’t doing what they’re supposed to.
The move from the old web host to the new one went remarkably smoothly, but this one section didn’t make the transition. I’m working on it, but it could be a few days. Or weeks. I’ll let you know when it’s back up and running.
First, it was such a pleasure to meet you in Austin last year. Hope to see you next year, too. I had a question that I’ve never gotten a straight answer on.
How do you format it when you’re trying to show text being written on a computer monitor, specifically showing the exchange between two people in an internet chat room (a la “Closer”, but I haven’t found that script)? I’m guessing INSERT: COMPUTER SCREEN would be a start, but what’s after that? Would the same be used to show the text message on a cell phone?
— Derek
Your instincts are right. I might choose slightly different words, but the net result would be the same:
With a glance back over her shoulder to be certain no one’s looking, Sydney quickly types in the search parameters.
ON THE SCREEN
Bank records scroll past at unreadable clip, finally arriving at a single matched record:
CREDIT DAUPHINE, 204394753, BRUSSELS
ON SYDNEY
She GASPS, recognizing her former faux-employer.
SYDNEY
(sotto)
SD6.
I used a separate slugline (“ON SYDNEY”) to get us out of “ON THE SCREEN.” If you were crunched for space, you could probably omit it; it’s pretty clear in context.
I don’t often use “INSERT:” or “ANGLE ON:” in screenplays. They feel fussy, and rarely offer anything more than a single slugline in uppercase would.
And as far as a cell-phone screen, there’s really no difference:
Hearing a strange CHIRP, Chloe digs out her cell phone. She’s gotten a new text message.
ON THE SCREEN
WHRE U AT?
CHLOE
grimaces, frustrated. Starts to dial.
CHLOE
(to Ruth)
I swear, your brother could get lost in a closet.
When starting out did you ever have trouble finding motivation to keep working on rewrites? Doesn’t the same story lose its interest after about four drafts?
— Brannek Gaudet
Good guess. Four drafts is about the right number. The first draft is exciting, bewildering and fresh. For the second draft, you have all sorts of brilliant new ideas and suggestions to try out, so that keeps it interesting. The third draft is generally damage-control from the second draft, where many of those good ideas ended up not working. The fourth draft, well…
The fourth draft sucks. By this point, the intractable problems of your script are readily apparent, and you’re faced with either (a) writing around them, or (b) trying to tackle them head on. In my experience, while you should choose (b), you generally choose (a).
It all boils down to two related questions: What script did you sit down to write, and what script did you end up writing?
At this fourth draft stage, you have to really decide between Great in Theory and what Actually Works. If you approach it this way, you can sometimes gain fresh eyes on your script. Read it as if some other, lamer screenwriter wrote it. What would you do differently?
Then, do that.
I’m in the midst of rewriting a short drama that is to be shot in about two months. I’m having trouble injecting character depth into it and I don’t know how to fix it. Everytime I try to make it more about the character it gets longer and longer, and it must be around 10 minutes (for university assessment).
— Eva Fitzroy
Character depth may be a false goal. With only ten minutes, you’re not going to be able to make [CHINATOWN](http://imdb.com/title/tt0071315/). Nor should you try.
Rather than cramming in extraneous character information, strive for economy. Is your protagonist a one-armed professional accordion player nervous about meeting his birth father? Fine. Show us that information in the very first scene. If you can’t work in all those details, ask yourself what’s really important: that he plays accordion, that he has one arm, or that he’s nervous about meeting his biological dad.
You may find you have to omit or alter some aspects of the character for sake of getting the plot started. So be it. Think of it like writing poetry: you may have really wanted line two to end with “orange,” but if you’re setting up for a rhyme, that’s just not going to work.
Good short films tend to be about a Character facing a Situation who takes an Action and has an Outcome. Yes, that’s sort of a generic template, but my point is that most successful shorts don’t spend much of their time filling in the details about their characters. What you see is what you get. So make sure those first details we see about the characters are enough to sustain our interest for ten minutes.