John August

Formatting

Chicago: The Musical. No, not that one.

Formatting, Genres, News, Projects

I spent a few days in ChicagoTechnically, Evanston, which is north of Chicago. Apparently, confusing the two is annoying to actual Chicagoans, on par with saying “Los Angeles” when one means “Orange County.” My apologies to anyone offended. to see the premiere of my friends’ new musical [Asphalt Beach](http://www.northwestern.edu/observer/issues/2006/10/20/amtp.html), which is workshopping at Northwestern University. The show was terrific, and vindication for my decade of belief in my friends’ talent.

I took advantage of being away from L.A. to start writing something brand new. That’s my modus operandi; I generally barricade myself in a hotel room for a few days to crank through pages when starting a new project. I write longhand and quickly — first a scribble draft of a scene, then a more legible (but still handwritten) version. I fax pages back to Los Angeles and don’t let myself edit.

Since a writer can only stare at the same four walls for so long, I try to pick someplace interesting for my sequestration. Vegas is a good choice. When one doesn’t drink or gamble, it’s basically a giant, noisy food court. That’s where I started both Charlie’s Angels scripts and The Movie. I wrote Fury in San Diego, and Tarzan on a 23-hour [train ride](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/writing-on-the-coast-starlight-from-los-angeles-to-seattle) from Los Angeles to Seattle. I wrote Fantasy Island and Jurassic Park III in Hawaii, though the latter was more “forced labor” than a writing vacation.

It’s been six months since I’ve written something new, which is my longest hiatus by far. So I was happy to find that I could still string words together in a non-blog environment. After months of dealing with actors and vehicles and visual effects, it’s liberating to deal with only words.

This time, I wrote a play. An honest-to-[Baal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal), curtain-comes-up stage play. The story sort of demanded it: it’s necessarily talky, less about What Happens as much as What It’s About. The lack of easy CUT TO:’s is more than made up for by the luxury of scene length. In a stage play, you can do things that are unwieldy in films:

TOM: Let me make Point One.
MARY: Sure, we’ll talk about Point One.
TOM: Now let me tie that in to Point Two.
MARY: Really? Well, here’s Point Three.
(Steve ENTERS)
STEVE: What are we talking about?
MARY: Point Three.
STEVE: That sounds a lot like Point Four, which Tom and I were talking about in the previous scene, only from the opposite perspective.
TOM: Unlike a movie, we don’t have to simplify arguments down to postage-stamp sized thought nuggets. Ambiguity and uncertainty are a-okay.
MARY: We can also assume a much higher level of audience sophistication, since only rich, educated people bother seeing plays.
STEVE: And no unnecessary car chases!

On the downside, [stage play formatting](http://www.vcu.edu/arts/playwriting/formatnumbers.html) seriously blows. Dialogue stretches from margin to margin, and stage directions are surrounded by completely unnecessary parentheses. But one can’t have everything.

When characters have multiple names

Formatting, QandA, Words on the page

questionmarkIn screenwriting classes they say not to introduce a character by one name only to switch it later on. For example, introducing a character as BARTENDER only to change it to BOB two pages later for no reason. However this feels like a different situation than my problem.

In my script there is a character that, for the sake of an important reveal later on, lies about his identity to the protagonist. In the script right now, the character introduction has his real name, while in the dialog he is referred to by his fake name. This ruins the important reveal later for someone reading the script.

The best example from a movie I can think of is the movie Charade. In Charade, Cary Grant’s character goes through at least three or four names.

How is this handled format-wise?

— J. Jovel
via imdb

In general, treat your reader like an audience member. As much as possible, you want to give readers the same information on the page that they would get on the screen. So if the character is introducing himself as “Mr. Truefake,” that’s what you should call him in the script.

In the third act, when it’s revealed that his real name is actually Ichabod Donnweather, it’s up to you whether you want to change his name in the scene description. If he’s only going to be sticking around for a page or two, you might consider using both names, like Truefake/Donnweather.

Another option is a quick explanatory note: “For clarity, we’ll continue to refer to him as Truefake.”

Either way, I’d advise you to keep using the original name in some form. Readers often lose track of characters, and changing up the names will generally make the situation worse.

Mixing in bits of other languages

Formatting, QandA

questionmarkI’m writing a script at the moment which at various points throughout requires characters to speak in different languages other than English. I was just wondering if there is a strict code for writing small moments of French or Italian in an English speaking script?

For example, do I write the foreign language as a regular piece of dialogue underneath the character name in block capitals as normal and write the English in brackets underneath? Or do I write the dialogue in English and indicate in the stage directions it should be spoken in Italian or whatever?

— Garreth
London, England

There are no hard-and-fast rules. My best advice is that if the word or phrase is short, and easily understandable in context, use the foreign language. So, the Frenchman says, “Bonjour.”

If it’s serious dialogue you’re talking about, put it in English. Here’s a few snippets from the Ops pilot Jordan Mechner and I wrote, which shows a few ways of doing it.

INT. KIDNAP SHACK – NIGHT

A corrugated-metal shack. We don’t see much of it.

A terrified Dagny is flanked by TWO KIDNAPPERS.

Their leader (the Voice) passes the phone to Dagny.

DAGNY

Papa? Papa!

(fast stream of Norwegian)

Give them what they want, please get me out of here, I’m scared! Papa!

MCGINTY (IN ARABIC)

Hospital! Where is hospital?

The old man scurries inside.

MCGINTY (CONT’D)

Friendly.

As you can see, we didn’t always format things the same way. In this case, I think consistency is less important than clarity.

If a significant chunk of your dialogue is going to be in a specific non-English language — for instance, if an entire scene is two characters speaking in Farsi — save your readers some bother and drop the “(in Farsi, subtitled)” parentheticals. Just say it’s in Farsi in the scene description. It’s your choice whether to leave it in italics.

How to format lyrics in scripts

Formatting, QandA

I was quite curious as to how one would write a scene with characters singing a song, musical style. Do we just include “singing” as an action within the handy parentheses? Or is there some other formatting we must use? And how much mention are we supposed to give to the music itself?

— Adam Scott
Perth, Australia

For movies and television, the convention is to put the lyrics in italics. It’s probably helpful to include a “(singing)” parenthetical the first time you do it, because some readers may not catch it otherwise. And yes, dialogue in italics can also be used for foreign languages, so you’ll need to make sure it’s clear in context.

Here’s where the former graphic designer in me resurfaces. Screenplays are written in 12-pt. Courier, which is not the most attractive typeface in the world, but certainly sturdy and readable. There’s an italic form of Courier that’s rounded and a little more like handwriting, which would be quite suitable for lyrics.

However, the “italic” form of Courier you find on most computers is really just normal Courier with a slant effect applied (called “oblique”), and it seriously blows. It’s ugly on screen. It’s ugly printed.

It’s impossible to write beautiful lyrics in such an ugly typeface.

So, having written lyrics in many of my scripts, I’ve come to use a different typeface altogether for the songs. For Big Fish, I used 11 pt. Stone Sans Italic. For Charlie and Corpse Bride, I switched to 11 pt. Verdana Italic, because I needed to send those scripts in as .pdf files, and you can safely count on just about any computer having Verdana installed.

Why 11 pt., when the main text is set at 12 pt.? That’s because Verdana looks much bigger than Courier when set at the same point size. You’re also more likely to get a full lyric line in without a break at that size. (Although I feel no guilt cheating a margin slightly to avoid a break in any event.)

Some scripts I’ve read will include a slash “/” at the end of each sung line. I don’t find that helpful, so I never use it.

In terms of talking about the music, your best bet is to describe the general style and tone, such as “bright, Sousa-like march” or “melancholy dirge.” You can give an example if it’s particularly apt, but I’d avoid a reference that makes the reader stop and think, “Hmm, how does that go?”

Note that the convention for songs in stage musicals is completely different. For those, lyrics are placed in uppercase along the left margin. You can see examples of the format in the templates for Final Draft or Screenwriter.