I recorded this video to illustrate the different ways screenwriters can indicate dialogue is being interrupted. It’s a situation that happens quite often in most screenplays. The choice of how you show it can impact the read.
There aren’t hard-and-fast rules, but there are definitely conventions, and in this video I cover most of them.
John and Craig discuss when and how to break screenplay orthodoxy, from experimental formatting to narrative misdirects. They also examine why it’s important that your characters create, communicate, and break plans.
We also address follow up from our Raiders of the Lost Ark deep dive, and respond to questions about shared and international writing credits.
Links:
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.
UPDATE 2-6-19: The transcript of this episode can be found here.
John and Craig have a dialogue about dialogue. They discuss how thinking about memorizing lines can help write them, and how to service quieter characters in a scene.
We also answer listener questions about adapting plays for the screen, creating a different experience for your reader than your viewer, and whether to trust sketchily worded release forms.
Links:
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.
UPDATE 10-16-18: The transcript of this episode can be found here.
In screenplays, when a character continues speaking after a line or two of action, the convention is to write (CONT’D) after their second character cue.
TOM
Sure, these radioactive cockroaches might kill us all...
He gestures to a glowing wall of swarming roaches. Like a thousand tiny pixels, they form surreal moving images.
TOM (CONT’D)
But look how pretty!
Final Draft and many other screenwriting applications will add these (CONT’D)s automatically unless you tell them no. And you should say no.
These kind of (CONT’D)s should never be left to algorithms. I’ve written about this before:1
Consider Sandra Bullock’s character in Gravity. Minutes may elapse between her spoken dialogue, but Final Draft will default to adding the (CONT’D) since no other character has spoken in the interim. You can delete the (CONT’D), but it’s a hassle, and it will come right back if you reformat text around it.
To prevent this kind of Gravity situation, Final Draft could set a threshold where it only adds (CONT’D) if fewer than X lines of scene description interrupt the dialogue. But that wouldn’t catch a more common problem like this:
MARY
Tom, stop staring at them! They’re hypnotizing you!
But it’s too late: Tom is transfixed. He starts walking towards the reactor core, completely in the roaches’ thrall.
Mary grabs him, trying to hold him back. But he’s too strong.
Finally, Mary spots Hector up in the control room. She yells, hoping he can hear her --
MARY
Hector!
Mary’s shout to Hector isn’t a continuation of her previous dialogue. It’s a new thing. Some screenwriters would choose to add the (CONT’D), while others wouldn’t.
The point is, it’s a choice the writer should be making, not the software.
Highland 2 will auto-complete if you start typing the (CONT’D), but it won’t try to put it there by itself. That’s consistent with the general philosophy of Highland and other Fountain-based apps: we will never change your actual text.
Note that these CONT’Ds are a different species than dialogue breaks at the bottom of a page. In these circumstances, there’s no authorial intent. It’s simply the screenwriting software trying to fit an appropriate amount of text on a page, and signaling to the reader that dialogue keeps going.
Highland 2 adds these (MORE)s and (CONT’D)s when you print or preview. They’re not baked-in because page breaks can change as you add or delete text.