It turned out to be one of the least useful classes I took in school because it was taught on a drafting table, with a T-square and eraser powder and drafting pencils. A few years later, a little computer called AutoCAD would suck all the fun out of drafting and make the paper and eraser powder obsolete.
Believe it or not, that drafting class did teach me about screenwriting.
When we were drawing blueprints, we were creating 2-dimensional representations of actual objects or objects yet to be made. A craftsman—or, more likely these days, a CAD machine—would take those representations and create physical representations of whatever we had drawn. That meant our drawings had to convey every relevant aspect of the object. We had one chance to convey this information, our drawing. There would be no going back later and fixing things.
When drawing on paper, often we had to draw to scale. A six-foot pipe couldn't be drawn in real-size on a sheet of paper, for example. So we'd reduce our measurements so that an inch on paper represented six inches in real life, or a foot in real life—whatever it took to get the object to fit on the paper. Likewise, we could blow dimensions up so that tiny parts were big enough to see well and all the detail could be shown. An inch in real life could take up a foot on the page.
Because we couldn't see through objects, we'd use a visual shorthand of dotted lines and dashes to indicate cavities or features otherwise hidden from view.
Because paper is 2-dimensional, we were taught a technique called isomeric drawing, where three flat, 2-dimensional views of an object from different angles could be transferred into a semi-3D drawing. Using this technique, the page could be split into four quarters and the object rendered visually in a way that anyone could visualize the finished product.
Screenwriting is like drafting in the sense that you're putting words on paper to represent the movement and kinetic energy of a visual art form.
I've included two passages below that tell the same sequence of events. Which of the following passages are more evocative of kinetic energy?
The suspect gets into his car and drives away. A high-speed police chase ensues. There's a car crash in the intersection just ahead. The suspect gets out of his car with a gun. The cops shoot him.
~ or ~
Jake slides into the green-as-weed Mustang and FIRES the ENGINE. The stereo SPEAKERS THUMP like a racing heartbeat. The back TIRES SQUEAL and throw off smoke as the Mustang races away.
Two POLICE CRUISERS WOOSH past, SIRENS BLARING. They chase the Mustang toward...
Traffic slides back and forth in the intersection. The Mustang's brake lights flash as it careens -- BOOM! -- into a minivan.
The police cruisers SCREECH and try to stop stop, but they -- BAM! BAM! -- plow into a convertible and a pickup truck.
HORNS HONK as the cops jump out of their wrecked cars, GUNS drawn.
Jake crawls from the STEAM-SPEWING Mustang, gun in hand.
POW-POW-POW!
The cops open fire. Jake goes limp against the pavement. His GUN slips from his hands and CLANKS against the pavement.
See the difference? Same sequence of events, dramatically different ways of telling it.
The first passage is bad writing on a lot of different levels. First and foremost, it doesn't convey the passage of time in any meaningful way.
Just like my drafting sketches had to conform to a uniform scale, so to do screenplays. Hollywood expects each page of a screenplay to translate into one minute of film.
The first passage doesn't come close to meeting this requirement. In fact, it's just a couple of lines. Judging by the word count alone, the whole thing seems insignificant. It's not even clear if the suspect car is involved in the crash.
The biggest problem with the passage is the lack of kinetic energy. See how the second passage flows? See the movement of characters and objects. Evocative language paints a picture.
Did you notice all the capitalized words in the second passage? They're not just there to make the sequence read more interesting—although I think they do just that. Those are callouts.
All caps means that that a sound effect needs to be added later. Car engines, gunshots, even music blaring from a radio are examples of callouts. I was taught to capitalize the object that makes the noise as well as the noise it makes. For example, a GUN will POW and an ENGINE will REV. Different studios have different ways of handling callouts. Don't get too hung up on what to capitalize. If you're not sure what will be a sound effect, then play it safe and don't capitalize it.
DO NOT CAPITALIZE FOR THE SAKE OF CAPITALIZING.
First, it's annoying. Second, it marks you as an amateur.
Also note, any sounds that will be recorded along with dialogue do not need to be called out.
Why would car engines and gunshots be sound effects? Why wouldn't they be recorded during dialogue? Good questions. The short answer is, when making a movie, you want the environment around your actors to be as quiet as possible to record clean audio. If there is a lot of background noise, then the dialogue will have to be thrown away and re-recorded in post in a process called ADR. Unless you're going to make movies someday, you don't need to know about ADR, and that's not really the point of this blog post. Google it if you're really curious.
However, the issue of sound effects brings up a point—it's insanely helpful to know how movies are made if you want to write movies for a living. And sometimes the best way to know how movies are made is to get a camera and make one yourself.
Another note, I used underlines and italics to punch-up the car crashes and gunshots in the second passage. This is not standard, but I think it ads to the flow in an action sequence. Don't use italics and underlines every time you write sound. If there's something loud and shocking that's meant to punch the audience, it might be okay then.
The screenplay is not a rough sketch. The screenplay is not a detailed painting. It’s both, yet it’s neither.
Novelists I’ve worked with either come into screenwriting with the mistaken impression that all they have to do is give a brief description of the scene up front, then write nothing but dialogue until the next scene. Either that, or they fill their screenplay with so much flowery prose that it ceases to be a screenplay at all and becomes a short novel in experimental form.
Those who have no writing background are even harder to coach. They labor under the delusion that readers will interpret what they don’t write, or they write in generalities and cliches. They believe some common fallacy that actors will ad-lib and fix any weaknesses in the script, they assume that when they sell the screenplay, they’re hired into the creative team that makes the movie and they’ll be on-set to talk through any problems with the script while the movie is being made.
Here’s a hint: NONE of that will happen.
Have you ever been on a construction site? Architects don’t spend their time with construction workers, ironing out kinks in the building’s design. A good architect will anticipate the needs of the project and answer all questions in the creation of the blueprint. An architect who doesn’t will soon be looking for a new line of work.
A screenplay needs to contain all the information that the producer, director, and studio executives need to see the movie. All questions need to be answered in the screenplay. There won’t be a question-and-answer session where the writer can clarify anything that isn’t already apparent in the screenplay.
You have one chance to get it right. That chance is called your screenplay.
If people don’t understand your vision, it’s because you did a bad job writing it. Don’t ever blame anyone else for your crappy writing. If you do, you’ll just become bitter and you’ll never get better as a writer.
Truth is, once the screenwriter types that final FADE OUT at the end of the screenplay, they’ve finished their role in making the movie. Unless, of course, the screenwriter is also a director or producer, in which case, they can pretty much do whatever they want as long as they’ve got the money.
That's another blog post for another day, though.
-The Illiterate Writer
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