John August

Words on the page

Including illustrations with your screenplay

QandA, Words on the page

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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, 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.

Writing for VFX

QandA, Words on the page

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The visual effects in CHARLIE’S ANGELS are dazzling. Did you write this into the script, or was it the work of the director? Could you please advise on how to write those slow motion shots?

–Lawrence

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The writer’s job is to communicate whatever is seen or heard on screen, and that includes effects. The best way to do this is usually to visualize the scene in your head, and do the best job you can describing it efficiently and compellingly.

Obviously, the director, along with the cinematographer and visual effects supervisor, are going to have the final say about what the effects look like. But until these people come along, the writer is all those jobs, so you need to do what you can.

Regarding slow motion, we’ll start with a lesson in cinematography. To achieve slow-motion, the camera runs at a speed faster than the usual 24 frames per second, often at an even increment like 48 or 96 frames per second. Then, when the film is played back at normal speed (24 fps), the action appears to be slowed down. More than that: it often has a somewhat dreamy, sexy quality that makes car crashes and pretty-girls-getting-out-of-pools extra appealing.

In order to achieve this effect in a screenplay, I add extra vowels and consonants to words. So instead of writing:

The Thug fires four rounds at Maxwell.

I write:

Thheee Thhhuugg ffiirrees fooouurr rrrounds attt Maxxxxwweelllll.

I’m kidding. Please don’t do this.

Instead, at the start of a scene that really, really needs to be slow-motion to make sense, I’ll add the phrase, “in SLOW-MOTION,” to one of the action sentences. So the sentence might read, “In SLOW-MOTION, the Thug fires off four rounds at Maxwell, whose fingers just reach the button in time.”

In the CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE, I wrote:

Handing off an UNCONSCIOUS MAN to PARAMEDICS, firefighter Alex pulls off her helmet to set loose a slow-motion cascade of black hair.

That time I didn’t capitalize “slow-motion,” because there were already a lot of words in all-caps. And I’ve been known to write, “in super bad-ass slow-motion” if that’s really the feeling I’m going for.

Avoiding cliches

QandA, Words on the page

When you are writing a screenplay, how do you manage
to focus on originality and avoid a multitude of clichés just
slipping into the story some how?

–Christian

In the writer’s ongoing battle against clichés, he finds two basic
enemies: verbal clichés ("as easy as taking candy from a baby"),
and story clichés (the explosive with a count-down LED timer).

Eliminating the first kind is simply a matter of recognizing them and finding
something better to replace them. I work incredibly hard on the narrative description
in my scripts, tweaking it at least as much as the dialogue. With vigilance,
the night never has to be "as black as coal" or "as cold as
a witch’s tit."

The story clichés are harder to deal with, because certain genres carry
them along like parasites. Action movies sometimes have the ticking time bomb,
or mismatched partners, or heroes who somehow avoid being hit when a hundred
bullets are flying their direction.

The key — and this starts in the conception phase of the script — is recognizing
the inherent clichés in a genre, and figuring out how you’re going to
handle them. SCREAM did a masterful job pointing out, subverting, and ultimately
fulfilling teen-slasher clichés.

Sometimes, the best way to avoid story clichés is to look at the reality
behind every character, every setting, every decision made in your story. Is
Carla Ann really "a hooker with a heart of gold?" On closer inspection,
she might be a nervous, self-deprecating dreamer.

Does the police station need a squad room full of desks and detectives milling
about? Maybe your scene could take place in a courtyard, or by the photocopier,
or in the cafeteria.

Clichés are shortcuts. The more you avoid taking them, the more interesting
the places you’ll end up.

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.