6

Writing an Original Short Screenplay

At this point, if you have faithfully done the exercises and assignments laid out in previous chapters, you will have learned, among other things, how to write and revise both character description and location description in format; how to use offscreen sound to create mood and evoke offscreen events; how to begin to develop a character; how to gather and transform material for an adaptation; and how to do a story outline for a short screenplay to be written using that material.

What follows is a discussion of ways in which character can be revealed in speech, and ways in which speech can be used to further a character’s dramatic action. In good screenplay writing, dialogue is as much a form of behavior as any physical action; it is also a form of dramatic action.

Finding A Character’S Voice

Here is part of another scene from Chinatown. Two characters talk in the scene, each with a very different way of speaking. If you haven’t seen the film or read any of the drafts of the script, you won’t know the context—but you should be able to hear two very individual voices and to follow what is going on in a general way. (Note that Evelyn is called YOUNG WOMAN until she identifies herself; this is a subterfuge used to make sure that the reader, like Gittes himself, doesn’t anticipate the surprise that is about to be sprung.)

The scene takes place in the outer office of Jake Gittes’ suite. He has just burst in on his associates, told them an off-color joke before they can stop him, and is “laughing his ass off.” He looks up and sees a stunning young woman watching him. She asks Gittes if they’ve met and, ever the wise guy, he says no, they haven’t—he would have remembered.

Gittes quickly modifies his usual rowdy voice to the more genteel one he uses with female clients as soon as he speaks to the young woman. When she threatens him with publicity, he reverts somewhat to his usual way of speaking, only because he is in shock. (“It’s not going to do any good to get tough with me—”) Evelyn Mulwray’s voice is that of a well-educated, wealthy, quite imperious young woman who appears to be accustomed to getting her own way. These two are worlds apart.

When you are not familiar with the way a character would speak, it is often necessary to do research the way that actors and professional scriptwriters do: take yourself off to the kind of place in which such a person might spend time and listen carefully to conversation around you. In the short script The Lady in Waiting, the authentic-sounding and very different voices of Scarlet and Miss Peach are the result of considerable such research on the writer’s part.

However, we all have many voices available to us—the voices of family members, of friends, of the people with whom we’ve gone to school, or played, or worked. Accessing this material is often a first step in discovering how to write dialogue that works.

Exercise 9: an Interview

You are going to conduct a friendly, imaginary interview with someone you know, or have known, well enough to have a good idea of how the person usually spends a day off. For obvious reasons, don’t choose anyone you live with or are involved with, or anyone who would be uncomfortable being interviewed by you. Close your eyes and imagine this person in the room in which he or she would be most at ease talking to you. In your mind, explain that the interview is just a writing exercise in which the person will be anonymous (as they should be).

You will be given a single (apparently) innocuous question to start off your interview, with a second question as backup in case the person falls silent for longer than, say, ten seconds. Anything less than that qualifies as a pause. Pauses, as well as any ahs, hmms, ums, smiles, laughter, or physical actions, should always be noted: these can often be more revealing than speech.

Remember that your purpose in doing this exercise is to hear the interviewee out, not to control the way in which the interview shapes itself. Try to avoid interrupting by responding to what is being said; respond only with encouraging murmurs rather than talk—uh-huh, mmm, right, etc. If things falter, ask the backup question, which may well lead to a sudden flow of speech. If you are skeptical, think of all the voices running through your head on any given day; think of the way in which actors work to create a character; think of the way you talked to yourself as a child. Then put aside your skepticism and go to work.

Here, then, is the first question: How do you spend your day off? (Or, how do you spend your Sunday?)

The backup question: If you could do anything you wanted on that day, what would it be?

Set your timer and GO! At the end of ten minutes, stop writing and read the exercise. Did you capture the sound of the person’s voice, the way that person would react to talking to you about him or herself? If not, it is worth choosing someone else and trying again. When you move on, as you shortly will, to writing an original short screenplay, this exercise can prove a useful tool for exploring your characters’ backgrounds: what it is they want out of life, and whether they are getting it.

Dialogue as Exposition

In the fourth chapter, we discussed just how much exposition was buried in the first page or so of Thelma and Louise. Reading the script or viewing the film for the first time, we are enough engaged by the two women—what they are doing and what they are saying—to be unaware of the fact that we are also being fed essential information about each of them in a masterful way.

Beginning screenwriters often tend to pack their characters’ speeches with information, both necessary and unnecessary. What is necessary—and, in the short film, it shouldn’t be much—can often be given through behavior, or through dialogue whose primary purpose is to forward the dramatic action, as in the excerpt from Thelma and Louise.

In the following scene from the comic script Dead Letters Don’t Die, we learn about the main character in a completely “natural” way—no forced feeding. We are shown, rather than told about, his innocence, his passivity (the man’s been in love for two years!), and a basic tenacity that helps him resist the fellow worker who is aggressively handing out unwanted advice. Chuck shows Thomas the tacky negligee he has bought for his girlfriend and asks what Thomas got for his “ole lady.” Thomas stammers that she deserves more than he could give her.

Dialogue as Dramatic Action: Text, Subtext, and Context

In art, as in life, gesture and speech have to be seen or heard in context in order to be fully understood. Someone may say, “Come in, and close the door after you,” in a manner that implies a request for privacy, suggests wonderful things to follow, or threatens your physical well-being. In order to grasp the subtext of a particular line or gesture in any script (the text)— that is, in order to grasp its underlying or implicit meaning—we need to place it in proper context, to examine that line or gesture in relation to the events or circumstances that surround it.

Again, in art as in life, people often don’t mean what they say or say what they mean. For a variety of reasons, some of which appear to make sense and some of which do not, we frequently choose to express ourselves obliquely rather than directly, using tone of voice and physical emphasis to convey our real meaning. For instance, in the example just given, you might respond to the line of dialogue by coming in and closing the door after you with a bang, or very slowly, or with exaggerated care, each choice denoting a different subtext.

Among the pleasures afforded us in viewing a first-rate narrative film or video are a kind of automatic deciphering of possible subtext along with an appreciation (the more conscious, the more pleasurable) of the tension that exists between text and subtext.

Exercise 10: Dialogue as Action

Write down the following dialogue, in format or not, as you choose. As soon as you have the lines on paper, begin writing further lines, or even physical actions of the characters, as fast as you can, without worrying about exposition or concerning yourself as to whether or not any of it makes sense. Write for 10 minutes and stop.

A pause.

Immediately afterward, ask your characters the questions from Exercise 2 (see page 29) and write down the answers. The answers will establish the context for your scene. When you have answered them, put everything away for the usual 24-hour period. The novelist and scriptwriter Raymond Chandler wrote in an article on writers in Hollywood that “the challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement. Such a technique requires experiment and elimination.”¹

If this is true for screenwriting in general, it is particularly so for the short screenplay and for dialogue in the short screenplay. To illustrate the process of “saying much in little,” here is the opening scene of a short script by Pat Cooper, one of the coauthors of this book, in first-draft and then in rewrite form. The script is called “Annie’s Flight,” and its protagonist is a seven-year-old girl whose parents are about to get a divorce.² Through much of the title sequence before the scene, we have heard muffled sounds of a man and woman quarreling.

When the time came to revise, the writer was aware of two significant factors before starting: (1) this was too lengthy an opening for a film of seven or eight minutes in length, and (2) the tension between the parents could be increased if certain lines were used as subtext rather than text (that is, implied rather than spoken). Here, then, is the revision, with her rationale for the changes:

The Identical Scene Revised

The Rationale behind the Changes

The father’s inner action is to get the mother to tell the child about the divorce without his having to be present, while the mother’s is to ensure that they tell her together. His line, “I honestly think it would be better if you told her” is too supplicating and is in any case implied by “I’ve got meetings all week.” Her response, “Cancel them,” is far stronger than her accusation of not giving a damn about his daughter—the implication is that if he cared about her at all, he would do what was necessary to take part in telling her. Other lines have been dropped for similar reasons—to make the conflict between them stronger and more indicative of what is wrong with the marriage.

The writer’s goal throughout the revision was to emphasize the struggle between the couple by compressing their language, increasing the tension by bringing their anger “under,” as the expression goes. She also wanted to imply that this kind of conflict is not at all unusual for them—just the particular subject on this occasion. (All of this would set up the conditions for Annie’s flight.)

You should note that a pause before a response usually denotes some kind of struggle or debate on the part of the responding character; a pause within a speech indicates some kind of struggle or debate on the part of the character who is speaking.

In rethinking the structure of the scene, it seemed better to avoid breaking up their exchange, because removing the interruption increased the tension between them, and holding off on the audience’s discovery of Annie under the table until the very last moment made it more effective.

Twelfth Assignment: Revising Your Dialogue

Read your answers to the seven questions from Exercise 2 about your dialogue sequence and then the scene itself. Try to figure out what is going on between the characters and what each of their inner (or dramatic) actions is, or seems to be. If this is unclear, come to a determination of what actions would make the scene work as you would like it to. (The initial four lines given were intended to suggest conflict.) If you want to extend the scene, do so now.

Think about any other changes you want to make, and rewrite the scene in screenplay format.

Stepping Back to Move Forward

Assignments and exercises in the first part of this book have been set up to encourage the kind of messages from the unconscious that produce specific and authentic story material, rather than the lifeless copies of copies that make for hackwork. To write an original short screenplay, you will be utilizing all the skills you’ve learned so far, so it makes good sense at this point to take a quiet half-hour to look over your completed assignments in the order in which they were written. Note the kind of material that you choose to write about and the mood or tone in which you most often write. Do you tend to go for the drama in things? the melodrama? the humor? Do you like to deal with your characters subtly? with bold strokes? and so on.

This is information about the way you see the world and about your writing style, information that should be of great help as you move on to writing a short screenplay.

Exercise 11: Writing A Letter

First, letting your mind run free, try to call up two or three painful incidents from your past, incidents in which you were essentially the protagonist. Take a few moments to reflect on each of these, dismissing any memories that still seem “in process”—occasions that you can’t recall without feelings of discomfort. Then choose a recollection to write about, even if you have to do so arbitrarily.

Second, imagine that you are about to write a letter describing, and perhaps explaining, the incident in detail (or in as much detail as you can recall—the act of writing about the past in an uncensored way usually stimulates memory to a surprising degree). Choose a person to confide in— friend, relative, or imaginary confidant—who would hear you out with sympathy and without judgment of any kind, the kind of ally who might even defend you to yourself.

Third, set your timer for 15 minutes. If you finish writing sooner, go back over your letter to see if you have left anything out; if you are not yet finished with describing the incident when the timer goes off, continue until you are done. Then fold the letter and put it away in a safe place for at least several days. As this is raw material of a very special kind, it should not be shown to anyone else.

Thirteenth Assignment: Getting Started (Again)

In this assignment, you will be following procedures outlined earlier for adapting material gathered about a folktale or myth into the dramatic structure of a script outline: first, making several photocopies of your letter, then marking off in different colors on one of these (1) the events, images, and remarks on characters or settings that seem essential, including descriptions of the main character’s thoughts or feelings, where important; (2) any other material that you are likely to use; and, finally, (3) whatever seems problematic but intriguing. Look this over and revise, if necessary, on your second copy.

The playwright Oscar Wilde once said that one’s real life is often the life one does not lead. If this is true of daydreamers, it is also true of artists, whose “real life” is often revealed only in their work. For example, the writer/director Jean Cocteau suffered at times from a disfiguring and painful skin condition. Very likely because of this, his profound identification with the character of the Beast in his 1945 rendition of Beauty and the Beast helped shape the writing and performance of the “monster’s” suffering so that it is as authentic and moving to audiences now, as it was almost 60 years ago.

Remember that this is an autobiographical fragment on its way to becoming fiction, so transform characters and events as you choose, as long as those changes do not undermine the credibility of your story. Changing the gender of your main character, or the locations where events take place, or even the time period in which they take place can sometimes distance you enough from the original material to make writing flow more easily. Now ask yourself the questions that we asked of the Icarus/Daedalus myth, getting two very different sets of answers—one in which Icarus was the protagonist, set in “mythical time,” and one in which Daedalus was the protagonist, set in the time of the Civil War. Who is your protagonist? (Choose fictional names throughout.) Who or what is your antagonist? What is the protagonist’s situation at the beginning of the script? (This should be written in as objective a manner as possible.) What event or occasion could serve as catalyst? What is the protagonist’s dramatic action? Do you have any images or ideas as to the climax? the ending?

At this point, it would be a good idea to employ some or all of the exercises presented in earlier chapters. What you will be writing is fiction based on autobiography: the people in your letter are to be thought of as characters, the rooms and landscapes as settings and locations.

If, after doing the next several exercises, you find this to be in any way anxiety producing, you should accept the fact that the material has not yet been fully processed by your unconscious and is still too “live,” so to speak, to be used as the basis for a screenplay. In our experience, trying to exert willpower or to “tough it out” in these cases simply doesn’t work; in fact, it is more likely than not to lead to writer’s block. You are better off putting away the material, choosing another incident, and beginning again. All that matters is that you end up working on (or playing about with) material in which you can take pleasure.

Exercises 12 and 13: Using Visual Images (Again)

Exercise 12 takes 10 minutes. Imagine an indoor hobby or activity of choice that your main character might pursue any time he or she has a chance. Close your eyes and visualize the setting. Then write down the following, substituting the name of your character for X: Night. Gusts of wind outside. X sits (or stands) at a table (or bench or whatever) working on things, completely absorbed in what he or she is doing. A long moment, and Y opens the door without knocking to come into the room.

You have 10 minutes in which to describe for the camera what X is doing, how X is doing it, and what happens when Y comes into the room. If the characters go to dialogue, fine—just be sure that the emphasis remains on the visual.

If, at the end of 10 minutes, you are still writing, and particularly if the description should turn into a full scene, continue on until you finish or run out of steam.

Now, for Exercise 13, quickly write down the answers to the now-familiar questions about your characters: Who are you? Where are you? What are you wearing? Why are you here? What do you want at this moment? What time is it? What season? What year? Besides being windy, what is the weather like? Take a break, short or long, and go on to the next two exercises.

Exercises 14 and 15: Further Explorations

For Exercise 14, think of a suitable location in which to place your main character, whom I’ll call X but you call by name, and write a brief paragraph describing it. When you have done this, let X walk, run, or leap into the frame and see what happens. At any point after that, let another character— possibly, but not necessarily, Y—come onscreen, and see what happens then. Stop at 10 minutes, unless you find yourself writing a scene that you might be able to use in your screenplay, in which case, continue.

For Exercise 15, consult your list of favorite offscreen sounds and try to find one or more that might add mood or even significant content to either the interior or exterior scene.

Fourteenth Assignment: Writing a Story Outline for Your Script

First, reread the suggestions for writing story outlines in the previous chapter. Then, using both the results of the last few exercises and your marked-up copy of the original letter, make a bare-bones outline for the screenplay, no more than a page long. Put this away for a day or two while you reflect on the feeling—the tone you want the material to express. When you are ready, look over the outline to see if you’ve taken a step toward introducing the character in his or her situation (perhaps by way of one of the exercises), included a catalyst, and offered some sort of ending, even if you do not yet consider it to be the right one. Change the order of the scenes if necessary. Next, write a more detailed story outline in which most of the “steps,” or numbered descriptions of the action, indicate a full dramatic scene. Remember to use the present tense for screenwriting, and—most important—try to give us access to your characters’ thoughts and feelings through their actions and reactions.

At this point, a reading and discussion of the outline, either in class or to knowledgeable friends, should prove invaluable before you move on to writing your script. Take notes of any ideas or criticism that might be useful, as it is easy to forget such comments. We suggest that you don’t rewrite the outline unless it seems absolutely necessary, but instead go on to a first draft of your screenplay.

Fifteenth Assignment: Writing A First Draft

Consult our examples or the short screenplays in Appendix B for the appropriate format. Then, keeping your portfolio of exercises and assignments nearby and your outline at your elbow, begin writing. Remember that the first draft of any screenplay is an exploration: the main thing is to get the story on paper so that you have something to revise. If you find it difficult to work at home, go to a café; if you find the word processor wearisome, go to pen or pencil; if you find any or all of the process daunting, break the actual writing into 10-minute segments.

Put this rough first draft away for a week, if possible, before going on to the next chapter, which is on revision. We strongly suggest that you follow the practice of professionals and do not show this rough draft of very personal material to anyone for comment or criticism until you have worked further on it, as is also suggested in Chapter 7.