John August

Words on the page

Including illustrations with your screenplay

QandA, Words on the page

questionmark
I know it’s a big no-no to include drawings or images in your screenplay, but is it ever okay in certain circumstances?

For example: I’m writing a script where the town that the story is set in is integral to the plot. A fight breaks out there in key sections of the town’s layout and it is all very well co-ordinated.

In this case, is it possible to include a small map of the town’s layout?

I’ve tried describing the town and its layout in detail, but it ends up at over 3 pages…and that’s condensed. Surely a small map could help the reader better understand the details of the action scenes?

–Matt

answer iconI recently read the first few books of [THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=johnaugustcom-20&path=tg/detail/-/0689859368/qid%3D1089740079/sr%3D1-2″), and sighed with nostalgic longing at the map on page two which shows the layout of the little town. The author/illustrators had gotten it just right. I immediately flashed-back to my sunbeam days of youth, as an eager young reader flipping to the map to figure out what route Bobby would take to get to the Old Mill.

Cut to the present. I’m going to stick to my guns and say it’s never okay to include drawings with a screenplay. For as often as screenwriting is compared to architecture, there’s one crucial difference: it’s not really architecture. With clever descriptions, the screenwriter gets to evoke the feeling of a small town, with its lazy cobblestone streets and general store on the corner. But you’re not allowed to literally draw the map.

I know that for something like a fight sequence, a schematic might make life a lot easier, but words are all you get. Focus on the emotion and story moments of the fight, not the logistics, and everyone will be better served.

Ad-libbing

QandA, Words on the page

How much ad-libbing do you write into your scripts?

–Walter Reichert

Some very funny movies have a lot of ad-libbing, which can give the
viewer the impression that there wasn’t really a script — the actors
just showed up and decided what they were going to do and say. But it’s
just not the case. The script may have been terrible, but something about
it was good enough to attract the actors and director in the first place.

If you happened to watch the second season of HBO’s "Project Greenlight" —
and if you’re reading this column, there’s a pretty good chance you’re
enough of a film masochist to watch it — you saw directors Kyle and
Efram defend their approach to an upcoming scene by saying, "We
were just planning on letting the actors improvise." To me, this
is analogous to saying, "We were just planning to let the children
drown."

Planned ad-libbing is like hoping for a white Christmas. Maybe it will
snow, or maybe it won’t. Your sleigh better have wheels just in case.

While I would never type the words "ad-lib" into a script,
there are occasions where people need to say something, but it’s not
exactly crucial who says what. For instance, in BIG FISH, there’s a scene
where the whole town has come to send Edward Bloom off on his journey.
Important lines are singled out to individual characters, but "the
crowd" gets just this:

THE CROWD (VARIOUS)

Goodbye Edward! / See ya! / We’ll miss you!

"Various" is a good word to choose when you need to indicate that there’s a range of possible options, be they in
action or dialogue. For instance:

VARIOUS SHOTS: Contorting his body in strange positions, Joe tries to get his candy out of the vending machine, but to no avail. Finally, he’s stuck in a half-pretzel as Jenny walks up.

Whatever you do, don’t use "ad-libbing" or "improv" as
an excuse not to write the best possible version of a scene. If you really
think the actors will come up with better dialogue than you can, find
a better writer.

Action writing

QandA, Words on the page

Say you were writing the script to an action flick–LETHAL
WEAPON, for instance. When you get to the part where Mel Gibson and Gary Busey
are trouncing
each
other at the end of the movie, do you write a blow-by-blow account of the fight
in the stage directions, or do you just write "Gibson and Busey trounce
each other for a while, and Mel wins," and let the director/choreographer
worry about the details?
I’ve always wondered about that concerning the action
scenes in movies, like fights and gun battles and car chases and such.

–Roger

There’s a common misconception that a screenwriter only writes the dialogue,
while the director handles the rest. Being a guy who writes a lot of action
sequences, I can say definitively that’s not the case — at least not in the
21st century.

Supposedly, when the screenplay for GONE WITH THE WIND got to the climactic
fire scene, it stated only this: “Atlanta burns.” Just two words,
but in the movie the sequence took several minutes.

In modern screenplays, at least those that make it into production, the action
written on the page pretty closely matches the action on-screen. A fight sequence
will almost never be written blow-for-blow, but will at the minimum give
a sense of the action, the stakes and the most important moments within the
battle. If you don’t believe me, flip through the script to THE MATRIX, which
you can find in most bookstores. The Wachowski brothers don’t label each punch
and kick, but reading the script, you get a very good idea what the fight sequences
will look like.

The same holds true with almost any action sequence you can think of. In GO,
I spend half a page describing the chase down the alley in Vegas, in which
the Riviera gets stuck sideways. Everyone reading the script — producers,
the director, studio executives — could see exactly how funny the moment would
be, which is how such an expensive and time-consuming stunt stayed in the budget.
Otherwise, it would have been the first thing cut.

The danger with properly-described action sequences is that if they’re not
written very deftly, they can slow down the read immensely. That’s why I spend
at least as much time working on these moments as the dialogue scenes. They’re
much less glamorous, and honestly, more difficult to write. But the ability
to write interesting and economical scene description is what distinguishes
the screenwriter from the playwright.

That, and the weird “gh” in the name. If a playwright writes for
plays, shouldn’t a screenwright write for screens?

Drafts and revisions

QandA, Words on the page

I just have a question (or a few questions) about drafts. How many drafts
do you normally do? How much do you change from one draft to the next? Is it
possible to be 100% happy with a first draft and leave it with that? Thanks.

–Simon A.

Depending on your definition of a "draft," which I’m going to define
as a revision that changes more than five percent of the script, I would say
most of my projects that have made it to screen went through at least twelve
drafts. Some of these went through massive overhauls, like throwing out
70+ pages, while others were much more focused, like changing a villain’s motivation or
clarifying a character’s backstory.

That said, my first drafts tend to feel very much like the final movie that
gets made. Even if a fair amount does end up getting changed before hitting
the cameras, I always make sure the first draft I show people could actually
be shot. Anything less than that – i.e. a rough draft – should be for your
eyes only.