7

On Revision: Substance and Style

What is a draft? For our purposes, a draft is a major rewrite of your script. In working on early drafts, try to avoid simply polishing, other than cutting long speeches or monologues. We will consider ways to hone your dialogue when we look at second-draft rewrites; at present it should be enough for you to review the sections on dialogue as exposition and dialogue as dramatic action in Chapter 6.

The great writer/director Ingmar Bergman speaks of writing and rewriting in an interview from the 1980s:

For some writers, revising is more pleasurable than writing a first draft, while for others, the process can be slow and painful. We aim to lessen the pain and increase the pleasure by suggesting that you follow the steps set down below.

Sixteenth Assignment: Toward A Second Draft

First of all, you will want to make several copies of your script. While it is possible to do the following work directly on the computer, using hard copy at this point could help distance you from your raw material.

Humiliating or painful experiences often provide story material that can lend itself equally well to comedy as to melodrama, or even tragedy. Everything depends on the writer’s point of view, his or her take on the events portrayed. It might be useful, at this point, to look over earlier written assignments with as objective an eye as you can manage. As a writer, what is your usual take on things? You will find that if you follow your natural bent, rather than try to go against it, both writing and rewriting will be easier.

To illustrate, consider two films by Woody Allen, which he both wrote and directed: Interiors, a studied, dour melodrama much influenced by the work of Ingmar Bergman (whom Allen rightly regards as a master), and the semi-autobiographical comedy, Annie Hall, influenced by any number of screwball comedies, including earlier films by Allen himself. Each film concerns itself with humiliation and psychological suffering, but Interiors uses the raw material for melodrama, resulting in a resounding dud, while Annie Hall mines a similar lode for comedy, and turns out to be a comic masterpiece.

It is also worth remarking that while it is possible, even desirable, to have broad comic scenes in melodramas such as Citizen Kane, The Big Sleep and Unforgiven, these films are features, in which there is plenty of scope to pull off changes in feeling-tone without disorienting or even alienating the viewer. Still, if the challenge of trying to pull off this feat in a short script interests you, it is certainly worth attempting in an early draft.

On Restructuring Your Script

More questions: Does the structure of your story work as well as it could? Looked at retrospectively, from end to beginning, do the events make a satisfying dramatic arc from climax back to catalyst?

In life, for the most part, things happen as they will, not necessarily in any kind of orderly way, while in art—and especially in the art of dramatic writing—things should happen as the writer wills, for the writer is constructing a shape. And that shape will play a major role in determining what the film is about.

What follows is a fairly painless way to revise structure in a short film script. If that structure seems solid to you, skip this procedure, though it is a useful technique to know about.

Take up the second, clean copy of your original script and mark off the beginning and ending of each section’s basic dramatic structure, as discussed in Chapter 5: Setting up the action, establishing the catalyst; developing the action; resolving the action; and, if you are fortunate enough to have this last one written already, closure.

Mark the crises, ending with the climax. Cut out each of these episodes, however short. Lay the pieces out in their current order on a table or the floor, and then begin to shuffle them about. What happens when Event C comes before Event A? Or Event B comes just before the climax? And so forth. Essentially, what you are trying to do is build an arc of increasing tension that rises to a satisfying climax and ends in resolution.

If you prefer to use file cards with a brief description of each incident, by all means do so. When working with large amounts of documentary footage, old time film editors often resorted to this technique as an aid in finding a structure for their material.

Whatever method you use, fiddle around with your material a bit with an open mind and see if you can come up with something that may work better than what you already have. If not, go forward with what you do have.

Seventeenth Assignment: Writing A Second Draft

At this point, you will have answered the questions above as best you can, possibly revised your structure, and should be ready to move on. If you have been following some of the suggestions and assignments above, you are already into your rewrite. Keep in mind that even seasoned professionals have not found a way to circumvent the writing of a script’s second, third, or even fourth draft—Robert Towne’s brilliant screenplay for Chinatown went through at least six. Writing any screenplay, especially an original one, is a process of trial and error and, with any luck, a voyage of discovery.

Allow yourself a reasonable time to complete this new draft, making a firm resolve not to second-guess yourself as you write, but to embrace the imperfect until it can be made better, and go to work.

When the draft is completed, put it away for at least a week before going on to the next assignment.

Eighteenth Assignment: Cutting the Inessential

Raymond Chandler, in writing on screenwriting, said that “the challenge … is to say much in a 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.” To do that, we suggest that you go through your script carefully and ruthlessly cut minor details, fancy writing, and anything that readers can figure out for themselves—anything that doesn’t seem essential. Be concise. Give us only the descriptive information we need as we need it, and introduce details as the audience would come upon them in viewing the film.

In Sob Story, Matthew Goldenberg and Michael Slavens give us this first glimpse of Stephanie: “20s classically beautiful blonde … she seems about as bored as is scientifically possible.”³ In this final draft, only details that count are left after rewriting.

Now reread the sections on dialogue in Chapter 6, cutting from your script any unnecessary lines, or lines whose subtext might better be suggested by a pause or some sort of physical action. You might want to read the dialogue aloud, checking to see that each character speaks with his or her own specific voice, that the language is colloquial, if appropriate to the particular character, or formal—or sometimes, if called for, both. (In life, many of us speak quite differently to different people.) Make whatever changes are necessary and prepare to take your script a little way out into the world.

Nineteenth Assignment: Getting Feedback

As the saying goes, discretion is often the better part of valor. It is wise not to use family or friends as your first readers unless they are screenwriters or filmmakers themselves. Most people are unfamiliar with screenplays, and do not know how to respond to such “bare-bones” writing. In some cases, friends and family may be taken aback by what your writing self has come up with. And they are (understandably) often more interested in you than in your script. It makes sense to show them a later draft, when you have less need of informed feedback and support. At this point in the evolution of your script-in-progress, what you need are knowledgeable readers who can offer feedback on where it seems to work, and where it doesn’t.

Even so, before handing the script over, it might be a good idea to explain that this is an early draft, and that you don’t yet need advice on polishing specific passages of dialogue or description. What you do need is to hear their candid first thoughts on the screenplay as a film story, what problems they see in characterizations or plot (story structure), and where these problems occur.

Although suggestions should always be listened to attentively and courteously, bear in mind that your readers’ primary task at this moment is to identify problems, not to solve them. You will also need to be alert to your own very natural desire to defend the work as people give you suggestions—even professional writers can have trouble with this. Of necessity, you have worked long and hard to get this far on your script—alone and in private—so it can be difficult to hear its “failings” discussed for the first time. Or even the second! But when people take the trouble to respond as best they can to your script, they are making you a gift, and your attitude should reflect this. In short, keep an open mind and stay pleasant, even when someone seems completely off base in his or her comments. However, criticism that is too personal, or smacks of value judgment, is best acknowledged pleasantly and set aside as unhelpful.

If you are in a workshop, you may receive all or most of your responses at one time; if you are not, ask your chosen readers to respond within a week. That way, you will be able to mull over their comments and go on to another draft without losing momentum. If a reader is not able to do this, ask if he or she would be willing to read a later draft, and give the script to someone else, as it’s important to keep moving. When you have completed the second draft and arranged for it to be read by two or three people (or in a workshop), put it aside for a while and take yourself out to dinner and a movie.

Twentieth Assignment: Toward A Third Draft

After you’ve mulled over the comments and suggestions of your readers and decided which of them make sense to you, it’s time to go on to your third draft, using some of the techniques for revising you have learned, or just plunging in. When you have completed this draft, it probably would prove helpful to hear your script read by others—either in a workshop or in an invited reading for a small informed audience.

In such a reading, your “actors” sit up front at a table facing the audience, while the narrator who will read all descriptions (except those accompanying dialogue, e.g., “ironically” or “sadly” etc.) sits off to one side. The narrator can also read bit parts, if necessary. It is best to have the actors read through the script slowly to themselves at least once to get the sense of it, before the actual reading aloud. Plan to leave enough time to respond to any questions they might have. Explain that you don’t want full performance from them; what you want is a sense of how the writing works, or doesn’t work.

When the actors are ready to start, welcome your guests and take your place in the audience, notebook at the ready, to watch and listen. When the actual reading is finished, thank the actors, ask the audience for comments or questions, and sit down facing them to receive these. Questions often prove more illuminating than comments.

After such a reading and discussion, you will have to determine whether simple revisions are all that is needed, whether you should think about going on to another draft, or whether you would like to try your hand at a different short script altogether at this time. In Parts II and III, we suggest many other kinds of source material, including genre, and many ways of utilizing that material in your work.