John August

Words on the page

More on Archer’s odd pre-laps

Follow Up, Television, Words on the page

Having seen my post about [Archer’s semi-pre-laps](http://johnaugust.com/2011/archers-semi-pre-laps), the good folks at FX sent over a copy of Adam Reed’s actual script for the Skytanic episode I cited. (FX seems awesome. Let’s all write shows for them.)

I’d been working off a transcript, so it’s interesting to see how those scenes [actually looked on the page](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/archer_excerpt.pdf). (Complete scripts of Archer are available in the Writers Guild library, FYI.)

Some differences worth noting:

1) On the page, we see Malory’s dialogue as a true pre-lap, occurring before the cut.

LANA

Cyril! It’s not what it looks like!

MALORY (O.S.)

Well then what is it?!

INT. MALORY’S STATEROOM -- CONTINUOUS

Malory, arms akimbo, surveys the room. Signs of a struggle. Pam stands nervously over by the bed, wringing her hands. Cheryl/Carol lies face down on the bed, nude and lifeless.

To me, what’s most interesting about Archer’s technique is not exactly where the cut is falling, but the implied line that sets up the next scene. Both Lana and Pam apparently said, “It’s not what it looks like!” Malory’s line seems to answer both questions.

In other cases, the cut repeats the last thing said, but changes the context. Earlier in the episode:

LANA

Psh! Cyril?! With another woman?!

(gestures at herself)

Malory, seriously: look at me.

INT. MALORY’S STATEROOM -- CONTINUOUS

CLOSE ON Cheryl/Carol, looking up at us, eyes slightly bulged, as a man’s hands squeeze tightly around her shapely throat.

CHERYL/CAROL

Look at me! Look at and choke me!

In both cases, the writer is calling attention to the cut. It’s like a literary star-wipe. The technique works great in a heavily-stylized show like Archer, but would feel very wrong in more realistic shows.

2) In Archer scripts, vocal noises without true dialogue are written in brackets rather than parentheses:

LANA

[mortified gasp]

3) A recurring joke in the show is that Malory’s secretary keeps changing her name. I love that they call her Cheryl/Carol in the script, despite the extra typing that requires.

4) Look at what Singh is wearing:

And there is Lana, stripped back down to her bra/panties/stockings, with Singh in the background, stripped down to his Spreefs, rubbing scented OIL on his belly.

Spreefs! It’s funny and just right. Even though the viewer will never see that great word, it makes the script read better.

Scene description matters. It’s a little gift the writer gives the reader.

Archer’s semi-pre-laps

Words on the page

The high winds knocked out our satellite TV, so I’ve been watching previous episodes of FX’s animated series [Archer](http://www.fxnetwork.com/shows/originals/archer/) instead.

If you haven’t seen Archer, it should be added to your list immediately.

Archer does a strange thing I haven’t seen often: the final line of a scene serves as the first line of the next scene.

It’s not a true pre-lap, in which you hear a line of the next scene’s dialogue before the cut. Rather, the same line serves as both the button of the current scene and the (unspoken) opener of the next.

In most cases, the scenes aren’t related at all:

CYRIL

So, uh, yes, the bottom line is that I was unfaithful to you...two, well, three times I guess if a dry-humpy choker counts. And if you can’t see it in your heart to forgive me, I will forgive you, because that’s what love is, Lana. It’s...forgivey, which is not a word – come on, Figgis!

REVEAL he’s standing outside the Von Zeppelin suite, talking to himself.

CYRIL

All right, here we go.

He KNOCKS. Lana opens the door in bra and panties. Back by the bed, Singh rubs himself with oil.

CYRIL

(gasps)

LANA

Oh, why?

SINGH

Hello!

CYRIL

So that’s your idea of a break, huh?

He storms off.

LANA

Oh, Cyril! It’s not what it looks like!

CUT TO:

INT. FIRST CLASS CABIN – DAY

MALLORY

Well then, what is it?

PAM

OK.

REVEAL Cheryl, naked except for a bra, lying face-down on the bed.

PAM

So...Cyril got in over his head...

MALLORY

Jesus! God, did he kill her?

PAM

No no no -- he ran from her, to go confess to Lana, but so then this one starts freakin’ out and long story short, I kinda had to drown her in the tub.

MALLORY

So you killed her?

Cheryl stirs, then COUGHS WATER onto the bed. She passes out again.

PAM

Apparently not. So...good news.

(I don’t have the actual script, so I adapted this from a [transcript](http://archerscripts.com/scripts/S01E07.html).)

It’s a fun technique that fits an animated show well. I think it would be hard to pull off in live-action, in part because it greatly limits your editing ability — you’re locked in on both sides of the cut.

Because of how it’s made, animation can be exactly as tight as you need it.

And because you’ll ask, this parenthetical without dialogue —

CYRIL

(gasps)

— is totally legit in animation. Any vocal sound an actor would make gets a dialogue block when writing for animation. Coming from live-action, it looks weird, but it makes a lot of sense when you’re recording voices separately.

His, hers and ours

Words on the page

Danielle Sucher put together a browser extension called [Jailbreak the Patriarchy](http://www.daniellesucher.com/2011/11/jailbreak-the-patriarchy-my-first-chrome-extension/) that switches gendered words (such as pronouns) on web sites you visit.

It’s more thought experiment than anything, but I became fascinated with one esoteric issue:

> There is a known bug with the English language itself that I’m dealing with imperfectly at the moment. See, sometimes “her” should translate to “him”, and sometimes it should translate to “his”.

“Her” functions as both an objective pronoun (give the book *to her*) and a possessive pronoun (*her cat* is orange).

Sucher attempts to account for this by looking at the words surrounding “her.” A nearby preposition is a good indication that we’re using the objective form. Here’s her list of matching words:

> aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, amid, among, around, as, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, but, by, concerning, considering, despite, down, during, except, excepting, excluding, following, for, from, in, inside, into, like, minus, of, off, often, on, onto, opposite, outside, over, past, per, plus, regarding, since, than, through, to, toward, towards, under, underneath, unlike, until, up, upon, versus, via, with, within, without, not, and, feel

Numbers, both digits and written out, also signal an objective pronoun.

It’s the kind of thing a native speaker never notices, but ultimately becomes important when teaching the language — particularly when the learner is an algorithm, like Sucher’s extension or Apple’s Siri.

(link via [Faruk Ateş](https://twitter.com/#!/kurafire/status/138711379782803456))

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.