THE EYES OF DOCTOR ORBIS
PILAR
(screaming)
Aieee!!!
THE EYES OF DOCTOR ORBIS
13 |
EXTERIOR – HEARSE – NIGHT On a long curve, the hearse races into frame towards and past camera. Camera PANS to follow action as hearse continues on around the curve and disappears into the night. FADE OUT |
What we have here is a sample of what is known as a master scene script: a format which, from the writer’s standpoint, frequently is the feature film’s equivalent of the fact film’s shooting script. A final description of what happens in your film, it spells out what’s seen and what’s heard, the action and dialogue within the framework of the setting. It’s your story cast into such form that the director can direct it as a film, the actors can act it, and the crew members can perform their respective duties.
By and large, however, it does not go into technical detail, the breaking down of the action into shots or the like, save insofar as these are necessary in order to make clear a specific effect the writer hopes the director will include.
Thus, our sample probably is written with far more loving attention to such detail than normally would be desirable. Why? Because the writer is striving to create a particular mood of shock and horror while simultaneously establishing situation and key characters.
But more of that later. For now, let’s consider nine key issues involved in writing a master scene script: format, visualization, point of attack, sequence development, continuity, characterization, dramatization, believability, and clarity.
1. Format
Yes, mechanics are important, no matter what anyone tells you to the contrary. Why? Because your script is, in its way, your calling card. If it shows a lack of awareness of accepted practice on your part, it labels you as an amateur; and we all have handicaps enough to overcome without that albatross tied around our necks!
So. Mechanics.
Ordinarily, the master scene script is set up in a single column format, as per our sample pages. With the left edge of the paper at zero and a machine using pica type, give your copy horizontal spacing thus:
10—sequence (step) numbers
15—directions—75
30—speeches—60
40—parenthetical business—55
45—names of speakers
60—transitions
75—page numbers
Now, let’s define and discuss our terms.
A sequence number is precisely what you’d think it would be: an identifying number in your script’s left margin. The number changes every time conditions of work (INTERIOR/EXTERIOR—SETTING-DAY/NIGHT) change.
If, in the course of revisions, new sequences are added (to sequence 7, for example), they become Sequences 7a, 7b, 7c, and so on, so that no changes need be made in the numbers (8, 9, 10, etc.) that follow. Similarly, if sequences (steps, that is) are deleted, the numbers remain in the script, but are marked as omitted, thus:
67 |
|
thru |
OMITTED |
69 |
|
or, |
|
67 |
|
68 |
OMITTED |
69 |
Directions are those lines describing the action to be filmed.
Speeches are the words the actors voice.
Parenthetical business is any brief instruction as to some action an actor should perform in the course of a speech, or the manner in which the speech should be delivered. Thus, in the following bit, the parenthetical business is underscored. (It would not be, in an actual script.)
DR. ORBIS
(thoughtfully, straightening)
Coffins. Faces without eyes coming out of coffins. The girl and Garza, trapped and frightened.
(continuing, to Karl, with repressed glee)
So: That’s the final set.
(significantly)
At the house, you note. Coffin Hall! And for bait…
(a sudden leer of triumph)
…well, what better bait then our friend Marinda! ‘Tonight’s Girl—Songs for Tomorrow!’ …Right, Karl?
In the same way, in the following passage, the “(to crowd)” line is parenthetical business. But the “He turns the submission dial” “He twists the fifth dial,” etc., are set up as directions because of their greater length and complexity.
DR. ORBIS
(to crowd)
You see? Dr. Orbis is the man who rules the mind! Before my power, the strongest surrender …submit totally.
He turns the submission dial as he speaks…makes a pass in the girls’ direction. Their heads go down. They hug themselves, cringing and groveling.
DR. ORBIS
Fear, hate, submission…ah, but these are bitter passions. Young ladies as nice as these deserve better. …Rapture, even!
He twists the fifth dial. The girls’ mood changes before our very eyes. They LAUGH (not giggle), cry out delightedly, fling wide their arms, move in small private dances.
A word of caution: Restrain yourself as much as possible when it comes to telling actors how to act or read their lines. For one thing, they “tend to act the adverb, not the line,” as a friend of mine phrased it. For another, often they resent it, unless—and here’s the key—the situation is such that it’s important to story and character that a particular interpretation be given.
Thus, the “significantly” in our first example is probably belaboring the obvious, in view of the speech that follows. The “to crowd” in Example 2, on the other hand, is entirely legitimate, because the actor playing Dr. Orbis could decide he should address his line to Karl or the girls—a bad misinterpretation, in view of the image we’re trying to build up for Orbis at this point.
Names of speakers are just that. Note that a speaker’s name is repeated if directions break a speech (second example above), but not if the break is for parenthetical business only.
Transitions are the shifts from sequence to sequence. Ordinarily these will be optical effects—“DISSOLVE TO:,” “FADE TO:,” “BLUR PAN TO:,” or the like. Sometimes you’ll find “CUT TO:” also, especially if a cut wouldn’t be the anticipated technique, but is desired for shock effect or such. Most of the time, however, a cut is taken for granted rather than spelled out.
Don’t worry too much about transitions, though. Odds are no one will pay any great attention to your thoughts on the subject anyhow.
A somewhat different aspect of transition is the fairly common practice of writing “(CONTINUED)” at the end of any page that ends in the middle of a sequence. The next page starts with the sequence number and another “CONTINUED.” Then, you drop down a double space and proceed.
Page numbers would appear too obvious to require comment save for one thing: From time to time in the course of producing a script, script conferences, changes of mind, or whatever, are going to put you in the position of having to add or delete pages. When that happens, treat each page as if it were a sequence. The extra pages can become 89a, 89b, 89c, and so on. And those deleted are accounted for by making the last page number before the break include those deleted. For example, page 61–2–3–4. Then, page 65.
Page number—two spaces below top of page
First line—three spaces below page number
Conditions of work, directions, speaker names, transitions—two spaces below preceding copy
Parenthetical business—next space below speaker name
Speeches—next space below speaker name or parenthetical business
All capital letters:
Character names (often on first appearance only), conditions of work, image size, camera movement, transitions
As per Sample Page 1, your first page will begin with an all-caps title … proceed to a “FADE IN:” … and then get down to business.
The rules on conditions of work are precisely the same as those we noted in our section on the fact film. Always, you establish whether a sequence is INTERIOR or EXTERIOR, its SETTING, and whether it’s NIGHT or DAY; and you present them in that order.
From there on, you set forth what’s seen and what’s heard, with as little extraneous matter as possible. Particularly, go light on trying to tell the director how to direct your epic, save insofar as technical details are necessary to make clear an effect you’re trying to achieve.
Thus, Director may not see fit to use the “SLOW PAN” in Sequence 1. But it does show him the way you visualize the scene, and that can be helpful even if he chooses to go another route.
Sequence 2 makes reference to something “OFF SCREEN”—that is, not shown—and, via the word “SOUND,” lets Director know you think the sound effect (often abbreviated to “FX” or “SFX”) of Pilars footsteps would be a nice touch here. Calling for a “DOLLY” shot of her legs as she moves down the hall really is out of your domain, but we can rationalize it on grounds that we’re trying for a particular effect: building audience interest via curiosity by showing only Pilar’s feet and legs. Same for the “HOLD” while she unlocks the door.
Note, too, that we give each character’s name ALL CAPS the first time he/she appears—a flag to warn Director that this is a new member of the cast taking the stage. The thumbnail description of the person is designed to help refresh his memory so he won’t momentarily confuse Pilar with the villainess or her aging aunt.
Sequence 3 satisfies our curiosity as to whether or not Pilar has two heads … gives her a degree of identity through her “nurse-type uni form.” We watch her discovery of Dr. Suarez’s corpse … experience the impact of it in terms of the CLOSEUP of the corpse and the CLOSE-UP of Pilar’s reaction.
Some directors might object to the writer’s usurping their prerogatives by calling for closeups here. But not many. Why not? Because, you’ll recall, the closeup is an emphasis shot—which is to say, its use is based on the assumption that you have something to emphasize … with reason, because you have a point you want to make.
Here, said point is (Closeup 1) the horror and ugliness that is dead Suarez, and (Closeup 2) Pilar’s horrified reaction to the shock of Closeup 1.
The logic of this isn’t likely to be lost on Director. Consequently, odds are he won’t protest too loudly.
Will he necessarily shoot the scene according to your specifications? No. There are a dozen ways to film any sequence. It’s quite possible his ideas on the subject are as good as or better than yours. But at least you’ve given him a notion of the way you see it, and the effect you’d like to get, and that in itself is worth the effort.
End of closeup. Pilar rallies and crosses to phone—and that in itself tells us something about her; she could equally well have fled or fainted. But either of those reactions would have made a different person of her; moved her out of the role she’s destined to play.
Observe, also, that we’ve written this to give our girl a few bits of business—things to keep her busy and the audience’s attention focused.
Take the business of keeping her busy: The Pilars of low-budget filmdom aren’t likely to be played by the industry’s Bette Davises or Katharine Hepburns. It does no harm to offer them a crutch or two in the way of simple action. They can always ignore it if they don’t need it; and if they do, it’s there and ready.
Similarly, in sequence 4, we’ve provided Karl with the physical tag of peripheral vision and explained how it affects him. With that motivation at hand, the actor playing the role can work to the limits of his competence—devising all sorts of business if that’s within his ingenuity; plodding with just the fact that his “gait is tentative and erratic,” if he can come up with nothing more.
So much for technicalities and format. On to
2. Visualization.
The first step in writing any master scene script is to visualize the action, no matter how clumsily. You can always correct flaws later.
So. The preliminaries are over. You’ve completed outline, treatment, and sequence outline of your new picture. Now it’s time to begin the master scene script. To that end, sit down at your typewriter. Check out the first sentence of your thumbnail synopsis of Sequence 1: “Sam Jones rides into town.”
Close your eyes, now. Envision that opening scene, the way your imagination would like to see it on the screen.
Next, write down what your imagination reveals as if there were a screen inside your forehead and you were describing a picture projected onto it from the nether reaches of your brain.
Maybe what you see comes out like this: “The dusty main street of a windswept western town. SAM JONES—tall, tight-lipped, saturnine, unshaven—rides in, horse moving at a tired walk. The rider looks neither to right or left, giving no heed to the loafers’ curious glances …”
Or, maybe you see it differently: “Mud stands fetlock-deep in Pila Seca’s main street. A monster draft horse, saddleless and of the type sometimes termed an Oregon puddin’-foot, plods wearily through it. Its rider, SAM JONES, stands out in marked contrast: small, dudishly dressed even unto a derby hat and pince-nez glasses, a man totally out of context in terms of both horse and setting …”
Or: “It’s business as usual on Packrat’s rutted, 1880-model main street. But then someone spots an incoming rider… stares slack-jawed. For the rider, SAM JONES, is mounted backwards on a particularly mean-looking mule. Tied aboard his steed, he wears only the nether half of a pair of long johns and a layer of tar and feathers so thick it’s well-nigh impossible to identify the man himself …”
No shots have been designated, please note; no camera angles specified. Yet in each instance, a word picture of sorts has been painted, specific enough to spell out clearly just what’s wanted, even while leaving plenty of leeway for the director.
How do you develop the knack of writing this kind of thing?
A first step is practice. Look out the nearest window—or from your car, or at a picture, or whatever. Then, closing your eyes, try to recreate the scene mentally and translate it into words on paper.
Or, read a chapter from a book and then, following the same process of visualization, cast it into master scene form.
Count on it, the first few times the result will be less than dazzling. But eventually the pictures you seek to paint with words will take form more and more clearly.
It will help, too, if you bear in mind the tremendous value of contrast, unanticipated juxtaposition of elements, as a tool, in creating any picture.
Thus, our first Sam Jones, above—”Tall, tight-lipped, saturnine, unshaven”—is the traditional spaghetti western figure: totally predictable within the story pattern. As such, he tends to be routine and so to offer little stimulus to the imagination.
Sam No. 2, the pince-nezed tenderfoot, is less of a stick figure. Consequently, he spurs us to greater flights of fancy. His contacts and confrontations come through more vividly just because they’re fresher; less predictable.
Sam No. 3 is even more colorful, more stimulating. His very dilemma is suggestive of all sorts of incidents and bits of business.
This is not to say that contrast is the answer to all problems. But the injection of one unanticipated, out-of-place element ever so often will set inspirational juices to churning in you—and maybe even give you a sharper, brighter, more intriguing presentation.
3. Point of attack.
Just where do you start your story? Or your sequence?
Just where, that is, in terms of the specific image you seek to have placed on the screen.
These are the questions we deal with when we consider the problem of point of attack.
Where your picture’s concerned, the opening shots are something you worked out long, long ago, in treatment and in step outline. But it’s one thing to plan, another to write, as Bobby Burns observed in his line about the best-laid schemes of mice and men. Quite possibly, when the cards are down, you’ll find it desirable to pick a different note on which to start than you anticipated.
The same principle applies to the beginning of each sequence, each group of related shots.
Whether the issue is story or sequence, the issue is the same. Two principles are involved:
a. Know the note you wish to strike—and strike it.
Are you shooting for impact? Mood? Characterization? Whatever your choice, know what you’re after and strive for footage that will convey it.
Thus, in our Orbis opening, the object is to inspire horror. The point of attack is designed to achieve that end. Viewers first are given a few moments to absorb a proper mood via a “spookily lighted” room. The fact that nothing happens is intentional, in order to build anticipation of fearful things to come.
Then, the first shock note: the corpse of Dr. Suarez, complete with bloody axe and the implication of jeopardy which that implies.
(Would it have been better to handle the corpse less graphically? Using a shadow image, perhaps, rather than actual gore? Who knows? A good case can be made for either view.)
Pilar’s approach and entry follows, built by the fact that our view of her at first is limited to her legs. Simultaneously, the shadow of jeop ardy grows also: Where before there was only a corpse, now we have a girl who, we sense, is potentially a living victim.
Closeups build the scene. Pilar reacts courageously—that is, in character—to the shock.
Enter Karl, personification of menace. The sound of his footsteps—a non-normal sound, please note—comes first, in order to build viewer anticipation of something horrible about to happen. When we see him, his sinister appearance intensifies this feeling. But when he closes in, Pilar, though obviously terrified, still reacts with courage, So …
Well, you get the idea.
b. Beware the dragging windup.
Most of us tend to go for the long windup, when beginning either film or sequence.
Quite possibly, jumping into the middle of action or tension would prove more satisfactory.
Thus, is it really necessary to show Character ringing the doorbell and explaining the reason for his visit? Might it not prove more effective to cut from him hanging up the phone, say, to the moment he tells Villain he’s under arrest?
More and more, in recent years, both audiences and filmmakers have shown less patience with plodding progression and long-winded explanations. From the stroke of the gavel to the clang of the cell door slamming shut is increasingly the rule.
4. Sequence development.
Developing an effective sequence is a complex business, and one learned largely through experience. But we can at least consider some of the elements involved.
a. Action.
Writers, being word people, tend to rely far too much on dialogue when they start scripting.
This is, to say the least, an error. More crucial by far is the matter of who does what, and what happens, for on the screen, especially, actions speak louder than words.
Our Orbis teaser offers a case in point. Not one word is spoken, unless you want to class Pilar’s scream as speech. Yet the message and impact are strong and clear.
Which brings to mind an instance in which I was hired to write a science fiction script involving a future society where life centered around games. Although I struggled valiantly with it, I was cut off at the treatment. Why? Because, in large measure, my approach was too verbal, too cerebral.
The next writer fared better. He left out all the dialogue, all the discussions and explanations, in favor of simply having people moved about on a sort of giant chessboard.
Please don’t make my mistake in your own writing. Analyze what happens in any given sequence, and then try to let the action tell the story insofar as possible.
b. Dialogue.
In spite of what I’ve said in a, above, dialogue is essential in most pictures. How to handle it? The preceding chapter gives some hints.
In addition, before you write, get the sequence’s mood firmly in mind. Impose that mood on any information to be conveyed. Then, write your dialogue to fit.
c. Proportion.
Not every sequence in a film is equally important.
That being the case, you need to decide which loom large and which can be held small.
The important sequences—those in which your central characters are in greatest jeopardy, standing to lose all—should be built big. The “foothill” or transitional units can be passed over relatively lightly.
How do you build a sequence big?
You prepare for it by planting and building up its importance and potentialities of peril in preliminary episodes. Then, when the sequence itself arrives, you write it in terms of subjective time, as it were, stretching it out with detail and hazard and complications to match the dimensions of excitement you wish to create in your viewers.
(Objective time is the kind you measure with a watch. Subjective is based on emotion: your feelings, your degree of tension. It’s what makes the two minutes while you climb the steps to your girlfriend’s apartment seem like ten, or the half-hour spent waiting to see if your agonized, convulsing, strychnine-poisoned cat will live or die drag on forever.)
Consider, for example, the heroine’s final effort to rescue a child in Aliens. To that end, she plunges into the monster-infested bowels of the planet’s atmosphere-producing station. A dozen times she barely escapes death and disaster, blasting the hideous extraterrestrial creatures that assail her. Finally, she gets the child into a lift that carries them to the point where an android is waiting to transport them to safety. Over and over, doom seems certain, but in the end woman and child survive despite impossible odds and the “death” of the android.
Now this episode (or the chase or fight in any one of a hundred recent pictures, for that matter) could very well have been presented in flatly realistic terms—at least, as flatly realistic as this kind of action/adventure epic allows. Instead, writer and/or director chose to build it to a major crisis. To this end, (1) the emotional importance to the heroine of saving the child was clearly established, (2) the hazards involved were brought into sharp focus, and (3) the sequence itself was shot and cut with tremendous attention to detail (especially details exciting and empathy-provoking to the audience), ignoring clock time in favor of subjective time in order to wring every drop of adrenalin from its viewers.
How do you hold a sequence small?
You deal with its content as transitional or of minor importance, rather than building it up as vital or climactic. Perhaps this means bridging endless miles of travel with a few shots of landscape sliding by. Or emphasizing trivia or tedium, as when Hero questions three or four people as to Heroine’s whereabouts without avail. Or restraining the emotion in a confrontation, so that Audience remains relatively calm and unexcited, as in the wryly ironic sequence in which Karen proposes to Blixen at the beginning of Out of Africa.
Beyond this, and as an overall guiding principle, write each sequence the way you feel it. Then, later, expand or trim as needed.
d. Pacing and placement.
In writing any sequence, consider carefully how it will fit into the picture as a whole. Specifically, bear in mind the sequences it follows, and those which will follow it.
The idea is to build to a pre-planned pattern, with crisis peaks spaced for maximum effectiveness—an individual matter with each picture—and intensification of tension from low points to high.
It helps, too, to try to avoid jerkiness, in favor of a reasonably smooth, rhythmic pace.
5. Continuity.
At last your screenplay is roughed in.
Next question: Do the sequences hang together?
Making sequences hang together is a function of continuity and, by and large, is a problem of the director and the editor. But the writer sets the stage for it, as it were, by his selection and arrangement of his material.
Thus, every event and incident should lead logically to the next. Or, as we phrased it in our discussion of dialogue, each unit should, in effect, acknowledge the existence of the one ahead.
In large measure, this comes down to anticipating your audience’s anticipations. Setting up your situation, you arouse viewer interest in certain issues, thus developing the old “What’s going to happen now?” angle. Then, tantalizing fragment by tantalizing fragment, you incorporate answers to the question. Simultaneously, you introduce new elements, new questions, to build tension—that is, interest—higher. But never do you lose sight of your line of development or the necessity of linking each new bit to that which preceded it.
In developing each sequence,
a. Is each character consistent?
Does your heroine act like a sexpot one moment, an icebox the next? Is your hero swaggering now, cringing then, scholarly the other time?
Consistency and believability are virtually synonymous where character is concerned. Do check for it!
b. Does Character break out of his role?
Pilar, in our Orbis sample, is the heroine. In keeping with her role, in the course of the script, she demonstrates courage, warmth, and concern for others.
Karl, the maniacal killer who assails her, also demonstrates characteristics geared to his role: coldness, violence, disregard for human life.
A Pilar who combined courage with coldness, on the other hand, would prove less the heroine; and, more important, would tend to confuse the audience. So would a Karl who murdered ruthlessly even while concerned for others.
This is not to say that characters must—or even should—be all black or all white. After all, Boris Karloffs Frankenstein was agonized victim more than fiend. But it is a fact that the subtle grays are more difficult to conceive and write. At first, especially, it’s wise not to stretch your luck and skill too far.
c. Does Character have something to do?
Nothing is more deadly than a character who sits around waiting for the feathers to grow. If he has nothing story-vital to do, why include him?
d. Does Character have tags to wave?
Dr. Orbis is tagged by his thick glasses and sinister smile; Karl, by his blank eyes, axe, and erratic gait. Pilar has her nurse’s uniform; Luis his reckless courage.
Granted, such billboard labels aren’t always essential. But neither do they constitute a cardinal sin, especially where easy identification is desired.
To dramatize is to present or represent in a dramatic manner—that is, in a manner striking in appearance or effect.
The essence of dramatization is the arousal of feeling.
Next question: In each sequence, are you making the most of your story’s dramatic potential?
The biggest part of this work has already been done, of course, as you built outline, story treatment, and step outline.
Now, however, as you write your master scene script, the issue is to hunt down details that evoke the feeling you seek to arouse. For if you show only the facts of your saga, you’ll end up with emptiness and mediocrity.
To this end, be sure that your key characters have strong attitudes in regard to each developing situation—attitudes so intense as to drive them to action and to conflict.
Reveal these attitudes in appropriate description of the details of your characters’ behavior. For to capture feelings on film, the production crew must have something to shoot which will create the feeling sought.
8. Believability.
How do you make a film believable?
a. You provide justification for everything that happens.
That is, you motivate your characters to go in the direction you wish. You provide stimuli which lead them to react.
Equally important, you show your audience these stimuli, these motivations so that, seeing, they will unconsciously say to themselves, “Yes, yes. If I were this character, faced with these circumstances, these pressures, then it’s conceivable that I, too, might do as Character is doing.”
In other words, understanding why your character takes the course he does, your audience believes.
b. You proportion response to stimulus in every detail.
When a girl refuses a man a casual request for a date and he bursts into tears, most of us will feel he’s overreacting.
When a child, screaming and bloody, comes rushing into a room and his mother fails to interrupt her bridge game, we’ll tend to think she’s underreacting.
Overreaction and underreaction are two major sources of disbelief in film. Viewers simply will not accept the character who behaves in a way they believe to be grossly exaggerated, either up or down, except in comedy.
Controlling such exaggerated actor behavior is, of course, the director’s job. But again, as in so many other aspects of film making, the writer can help.
Cases in point are beyond number. But one that I particularly remember is Billy Wilder’s answer to a question as to why he began Some Like It Hot with the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The issue, he said, was that a truly powerful motivation was necessary to make it believable that Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, the two musicians, would don girls’ clothes and take it on the run. Anything less than the threat of death would have made their behavior seem gross overreaction. But with the killings firmly established, their flight in drag appears plain good sense—whereupon, the picture was off to a credible start.
9. Clarity.
Your script, presentation of your visualizations, will be helped markedly by clarity of language. A few points to bear in mind are:
The nouns most useful to you are those classed as pictorial: those that flash snapshots in your reader’s mind.
The specific noun ordinarily is stronger than the general, the concrete than the abstract, the definite than the vague, the singular than the plural.
Active verbs, verbs that show something happening, are stronger than passive. And for film script purposes, you of course use them in the present tense.
Judiciously used, adjectives help to sharpen a word picture: “tall, tight-lipped, saturnine” says something about both man and mood.
Same for adverbs: “turns angrily” is different from “turns tearfully” or yet “turns slack-jawed.”
Short words are a virtue. So are short sentences—especially short simple declarative sentences. “Mud stands fetlock-deep in Pila Seca’s main street” sets a stage with minimum waste motion.
Clarity comes first, always, in a script. But vividness is no sin if you can manage it without conflict. When we say that a man “wears only the nether half of a pair of long johns and a layer of tar and feathers,” hopefully we’ve established an image that will inspire Director to something better than routine handling.
* * *
So there you have it: nine points to help you build a master scene script.
Remember, though, some things writing a script may be, but me chanical it isn’t. In getting any kind of words on paper, the trick is first to learn the ropes. This, I trust, is something this book will help you do.
When you write, however, fly by the seat of your pants, following your impulses and instincts. Afterward is the time to think of rules, when you go back over your epic, checking and correcting.
* * *
What about writing a shooting script for your feature film?
Please don’t.
Why not?
Because it will waste your time and energy for nothing.
Thing is, as I’ve so often said before, but now reiterate, directors feel that breaking down a script into shots is something that’s strictly their business. So, even worse than resenting your efforts, they’ll ignore them.
That means that, for you, the only time to write a shooting script is when Director, of his own volition, suggests that you and he sit down to work out same together.
What about your second draft screenplay, final draft screenplay, rewrites of screenplays, and the like?
Sorry. First draft is as far as we go in this book.
How so?
Because these later stages are something you have no need—or opportunity—to deal with until you’ve had a first draft screenplay approved by someone.
When that time comes, revision will be a subject of endless discussion and conferences. Your guidelines then will be the decisions reached by you and your colleagues. Nothing I might say here, beyond the principles already set forth, will help much.
Besides, it’s more important now that you get on to an appraisal of various and sundry tricks of the trade of scriptwriting, as set forth in Part 3 of the present volume.