John August

QandA

Formatting notes in a screenplay

Formatting, QandA, The Nines

questionmarkI’ve searched through The Hollywood Standard and most of your site’s scripts, and nothing pings for “WRITER’S NOTE.” Does that mean they don’t really exist or should never be used?

If they can be used, what would you suggest as a way to format instances where the screenwriter wants to stop and point something out that helps the readers read? Even saying that makes it sound like you shouldn’t do it, but I swear I’ve seen them used before…even though I can’t find any examples now.

— Steve Maddern

answer iconIn most cases, you can handle things like this in scene description. For example, if you have a recall of a character we haven’t seen in a long time:

Durban’s massive Henchman -- the same one we saw in the opening sequence -- emerges from wreckage, cut and bruised but somehow still alive.

Or to describe how a sequence is meant to be shot:

In a dreamy, super-saturated haze, Celia makes her way through the crowded party, a grin stretched ear-to-ear. She is floating, with TEENAGERS rushing past her.

Only very rarely do you have to do a full dead stop to explain something to readers. I’ve probably done it twice in 40+ scripts. For The Nines, I have a note to readers right after the title page:

nines reader note

But that’s a really odd case.

You’ll almost always be able to handle it in-line with scene description. Set it off with parentheses, brackets or dashes if it helps. But there’s no need to label it as a writer’s note or somesuch.

Endless producer notes

Producers, Psych 101

questionmarkMy writing partner and I are young “nobodies” trying to write for film and television. While we’ve worked in the industry for years and have written a lot of work, we’re still fighting to get represented or to make a sale. Here’s where the question comes in:

About a year ago we got hooked up with a producer from a major studio who was willing to read our work and develop scripts with us. He’d read some work of ours and said that he liked the writing. That’s great! After bouncing around some of our ideas we began working on an original idea of his.

We spent hours upon hours putting together draft after draft and adjusting to an onslaught of notes that we would get back. Every time would be, “this is good but…” and then he would ask us to change the whole story. We would oblige (because we’re nobodies and he’s a working producer) and then start from scratch, re-build the story and write another draft. Most of the notes we were applying were things that we didn’t agree with and felt that they took the script in a direction we didn’t like. This was an endless cycle. But we dealt with it — in hopes that it would matter.

Eventually we finally got a story that he “liked” (because he apparently no longer liked the story he pitched us originally) and we thought we were ready for him to show it around to other producers or to agents/managers but instead he’s asked that we sit with him and go through the script line by line so that he can correct it. Line. By. Line.

We know that notes are part of the process and we’re very receptive to constructive criticism but seeing as how we’re not getting paid for this work and he’s basically asking us to transcribe his every thought into Final Draft (thoughts we don’t even see eye to eye on) — at what point are we just being abused and wasting our time?

Seeing as this is the biggest connection that we have and the best chance we’ve seen so far to have any sort of “break-in” we’re desperately holding on to it but it keeps feeling more and more demeaning and pointless. Thoughts?

– Brandon and Gabriel
Los Angeles, CA

answer iconYour suspicions are correct: this won’t stop until you make it stop.

You’re essentially doing spec work — writing without getting paid. While you own the words you’ve written, the producer can (reasonably) claim some ownership of the story. He’ll be attached to whatever screenplay you end up with.

But take comfort: you’re not alone.

This is a very common situation for screenwriters at the beginning of their careers. In fact, I’d guess that most working screenwriters have an anecdote similar to yours.

I spent six months rewriting a draft of my first screenplay with a former development executive who I later realized had few connections and zero ability to actually get a movie made. She pinned all my hopes on getting one agent at CAA to read my script. We waited two months to get a perfunctory pass.

As aggravating as the experience was, I can also look at it from her perspective: she invested many hours reading and meeting with me. She truly believed in my script, and wanted to make it better. The worst I can fault her for is over-estimating her abilities as a producer.

I suspect the situation is similar with your producer. He sees himself as a Good Guy, and doesn’t hear your groans of annoyance.

Your challenge now is to find a way out of this bad situation while maintaining a good relationship. Before starting on any new work, you need to have a conversation with him about exactly what the next steps will be.

For starters, you need an agent or a manager. Conveniently, he deals with agents and managers all the time, so he needs to pick up the phone and call a few on your behalf.

He may balk at first, not wanting to send out the script you’re writing for him. That’s fine. You have other writing samples. Agents and managers should be reading them.

You also need to set some mutual deadlines. “So, we’ll get you these changes on Tuesday. Then we’re going to send it to (appropriate director) to read for the weekend, right?”

Just so you know, these situations never really end. Producer notes will always grow to fill the amount of time you have — and then bleed past the edges. Even with an agent or manager to play bad cop, screenwriters are constantly balancing the need to keep producers happy and keep the process moving along. That’s part of the job.

Writing Faster

Snake People, The Variant, Writing Process

Michael Agger looks at scientific studies on writing to figure out [why it’s so damn hard](http://www.slate.com/id/2301243/pagenum/all/):

> Kellogg terms the highest level of writing as “knowledge-crafting.” In that state, the writer’s brain is juggling three things: the actual text, what you plan to say next, and — most crucially — theories of how your imagined readership will interpret what’s being written. A highly skilled writer can simultaneously be a writer, editor, and audience.

All that mental shifting slows writers down.

> Since writing is such a cognitively intense task, the key to becoming faster is to develop strategies to make writing literally less mind-blowing. Growing up, we all become speedier writers when our penmanship becomes automatic and we no longer have to think consciously about subject-verb agreement.

I can attest to screenwriting getting easier and faster with practice. The form is so esoteric and strange, with special formatting and rules to follow, that the first few scripts you write are mostly about getting comfortable with the shape of screenplays.

Once you start to recognize the rhythm of the page — how action interrupts dialogue, how to change locations while staying in a story thread — a lot of the frustrating craft stuff melts away. Decisions you used to consciously agonize over get taken care of before you’re even aware of them.

(Or, more geekily, it’s like your brain develops a graphics card to ease the strain on your main processor.)

I really notice the difference when I write prose fiction. I’m happy with both [The Variant](http://johnaugust.com/variant) and [Snake People](http://johnaugust.com/2010/snake-people), but they were exhausting to write, because I found myself far too conscious of every choice.

Pronunciation jokes

Television, Words on the page

In Crazy, Stupid, Love there’s a running joke where the characters keep mispronouncing Kevin Bacon’s character’s last name (Lindhagen). There’s a similar kind of joke in The Hangover where Zach Galifianakis’s character puts the emphasis on the wrong syllable of a naughty word. On film these jokes are extremely funny, but these seem like the kind of jokes that wouldn’t work as well on paper. So my question is two fold:

1. Do you think these types of jokes would be effective on the page? (aka “Should I even bother?”)

2. If so, any thoughts on how best to write something like this? Use accents and junk in dialogue, use a parenthetical, or cue in the reader in an action line?

— Nima
New York, NY

Pronunciation jokes have a tendency to feel cheap and hoary. But when they work, they work — and it’s easy enough to show them on the page.

MARY

(checking form)

Are you Mr. Donaldson?

MAN IN COAT

Doe. Nald. Sohn.

MARY

Excuse me?

MAN IN COAT

The o’s are long.

MARY

Oh.

MAN IN COAT

Yes. Not ‘uh.’ There is no schwa.

MARY

Doughnaldsone.

MAN IN COAT

Three syllables. Doe.

MARY

Doe. A deer.

MAN IN COAT

(unamused)

Nald.

MARY

Nald.

MAN IN COAT

Sohn.

MARY

Sohn. Doe-Nald-Sohn.

MAN IN COAT

Close enough.

Back to her form. A beat.

MARY

Mr. Doe-Nald-Sohn, I’m sorry to tell you your dog is dead.

Frankly, without more context my example feels like a [clam](http://www.janeespenson.com/archives/00000338.php) — a joke that’s become musty through over-use.

But I can imagine scenarios in which its familiarity would actually work in its favor. [Archer](http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/archer/) could probably weave in this kind of joke simply because of the heightened-deadpan nature of the show. And in the context of a dramedy, the setup is flat enough that it doesn’t really feel like a joke is coming, so the punchline is genuinely a surprise.