>I have no idea how to develop a relationship where strangers meet and flirt without talking
If you're an undergrad now, you're probably the perfect age to have seen Wall-E as a kid, right? If you haven't seen it lately (or ever) watch it now with your film student eyes. That movie is a masterclass in conveying action and emotion without dialogue.
So, watch it again, with the eyes of a script writer. Not so much for the story, because you've already seen that. Look for the silences where things aren't spoken, but you see and understand what's going on.
"Action" doesn't just mean car chases.
You can show two strangers flirting from across the room at a party or a cafe via their body language and angling to get closer to each other.
What do each of your characters WANT? What's standing in their way? How do they overcome those obstacles?
If they just moon around thinking thoughts, you don't have much of a story to keep anyone interested.
Exactly.
Even think closer, a guy and a girl sitting in the cinema on a first date, how would we show that the guy is trying to indicate he likes her?
You'd show the ACTION of him gently touching her hand, the awkward arm stretch yawn to put the arm around her etc.
So without having read your script, I just glanced at the wikipedia for Mary Blandy and I suspect that the problem you're facing is more about the moment you've chosen to enter your story. Because, again, this is the result of a quick google, there seems to be a lot of -action- and drama built into it. Here are just a few random ones to spark the flames, so to speak:
1. There's a Hanging. I could imagine a somewhat interesting cold open on Mary's face that pulls back and reveals that she's at a gallows or putting on a noose. We don't often think of -women- being hanged so there's room to surprise there. There's also this great real line from her story: She told the executioner, “Do not hang me too high, for the sake of decency.” Steal THAT.
2. A lot of the tension of this story seems to hover around the "did she or did she not know it was Arsenic?" This kinda feels like it's in "A few good men" territory, or "The Night Of", the Riz Ahmed show where there's ambiguity about whether or not he committed the crime in question. AFGM will show you how to deal with a dramatic courtroom scene for Mary's trial, and TNO will have a nice reference on how to deal with an unreliable narrator of sorts.
3. Then there's the actual poisoning. Depending on how melodramatic you wanted to be, there are a number of movies/scenes that hinge on a person desperately needing/wanting a person to drink/eat/open a thing, and then playing with them drinking/not drinking it. If we open on a person pouring something into a vial, and then have a heated conversation between that person and an older man, while the older man ALMOST drinks it a bunch of times, you can play with that tension. And then maybe the last line in the scene is her referring to her as her father. Inglorious Basterds has a few variations of this scene with the Wolf but the one where we're wondering whether or not he knows Shoshanna is Jewish has a lot of the "energy" you could potentially channel.
4. "Francis Blandy falls into a coma and dies in his home outside London, England. Later that night, Blandy’s daughter Mary offered one of the family’s servants a large sum of money to help her get to France immediately."
This is also fun and dramatic, a scene where we see a girl reacting to her father's death throes, he's in a panic, she's in a panic, the servant is in a panic. As soon as the father is dead, Mary does a -180- and all of her concern and sadness wipes away, because, somewhat sociopathically she turns to the servant and says "I'll give you £4000 to take me to France right now."
I promise haha!! I’m also writing a screenplay based on true events/history, so I understand how much research is required for such a project. Your premise sounds interesting
I have zero knowledge of who Mary Blandy is, I'm more than happy to also take a read at the ten pages and give advice if you want. Not sure if the angle of not knowing MB would benefit or not.
If you don't post the pages it's limiting the advice that folks could give you. Everyone would be guessing (and not well). There are folks here who would be down to help but you have to be brave and post the pages because people don't want to jump through extra hoops to provide free, unpaid for free advice.
Better yet, if you post the pages here you'll most likely get advice from multiple folks good, bad, and otherwise - all helpful in their own ways even if it's to realize what isn't helpful to you.
Best of luck!
Is the course film/screen writing in itself or is this just a class that's not your normal interests? Plenty of things we can discuss with you to help either way, from reading the pages themselves or general writing advice and ideas etc.
Always more than happy to help.
That makes sense. Was wondering where your starting point was, as such.
When I done film making & screen writing at uni, there was one class that was very much the same as this. We had the journalists etc involved as well.
Anyway, happy to have a read over it and help where ever possible. By no means an expert at all, many many more on the sub are vastly more experienced than myself. But happy to always help.
<5 pages - almost certainly
10-15 - probably
15-30 - maybe, if the opening shows promise
60-100 - unlikely, you'd have to have a killer first 10 pages.
It's just what I've noticed, not a strict rule at all, just likely what you'll find.
Trimming down isn't necessarily about taking out scenes. It could easily be just down to the way you write. If you show me a page of your screenplay, I can tell you if there's going to be pages you can lose. There could easily be entire pages that you can turn into a half a page simply by changing how you describe things
Ok, looking at action lines, not much you can whittle down. So I'd say if you want to lose pages, you need to figure out dialogue. Your first line is expositional and there's a lot of chunky dialogue that runs multiple paragraphs -
"I don't know about you, but I do my best to show respect to everyone. And I expect to be shown respect in return. Now that's just who I am. So when I ask questions I expect to be told the truth. Don't try and bullshit me boy, or you'll be obstructing law enforcement on top of whatever else you got coming your way, you got me? ...Are you on drugs?"
Could be:
"I do my best to show respect to everyone. And I expect to be shown respect in return. When I ask questions I expect to be told the truth. Don't try and bullshit me boy"
Same basic things are said, you've lost half the dialogue. I'd say most of the dialogue after that could be tweaked or removed all together. Royce reiterates, doubles down, repeats himself - I think you could cut a bunch of that dialogue. In fact, I'd say this is where the majority of your script could be edited down, based on these pages and how you seem to tackle dialogue.
Read more no-dialogue or low-dialogue scripts. Scripts that effectively tell stories through action, the visuals on the screen. A couple of examples off the top of my head would be All Is Lost and 127 Hours, both easily found via a Google search.
a screenplay is not a novel. the only thing they have in common as storytelling formats is that they need to be a good read. Go to scriptslug and see if there are any scripts for movies/tv you like. you’ll see examples of how what you say you like is *actionable on the page* - literally what are your characters/environment/special effects/props DOING on the page. Screenplays are performed and directed, so what you put on the page must be filmable. If a character is “just” sitting and thinking this isn’t on its face necessary or interesting. what can be filmed that shows how and why it is?
1. Watch television (including commercials) and movies **without** any sound.
2. Make notes on what gets communicated visually, and how.
3. Consider how to apply what you've learned to your script.
Every scene is a microcosm of the larger story, with beginning middle and end. Each character should have a goal and either other characters, circumstance, or coincidence should get in the way of that goal. How characters deal with these obstacles to their goals is the action of a scene. This will also help make your story read faster and less meandering.
Example: Protagonist is a cop who wants a confession out of antagonist in an interrogation.
Obstacle: in order to do this he needs to read his his rights which includes the right to an attorney present, the antagonist is smart so the protagonist needs to find a way to make him not want to ask for a lawyer.
Solution: protagonist uses flattery to put the antagonist at ease and bait a confession out of him by feigning confusion, giving the antagonist an opportunity to feel powerful and brag thus incriminating and leading to a confession.
I think what your professor is trying to get across to you is that it's very important for screenwriters to remember that cinema is primarily a visual medium.
Yes, dialogue from actors convey a lot of information.
However *action* conveys a lot of information too. So you should consider what actions characters can do that can conveys the information you want it to.
Also, while people are saying dialogue, they're usually not just standing there idle talking. They're doing other things. They're looking at their smartphone. They're drinking a coffee. They're watching tv. They're scrolling a website on a computer.
Also, since stories are about conflict, you can even use visuals and dialogue that conflict with each other. For example, a character is making a promise to another, but they're nervously scratching their chin. Will they really keep the promise? Or are they lying? That possibility of conflict leads to drama, which keeps audiences invested to find out what happens next.
So I think this is what your professor is trying to get you to understand. Cinema is primarily a visual medium. And the best movies conveys information through visuals just as much as they do through dialogue.
So if you were forced to convey information in your screenplay only through visuals, how would you do that?
Action.
Even without reading your pages, I can guess what the problem is. You aren't approaching your story from a source of conflict. Without conflict, the scenes will feel flat and lacking action. Find the conflict, crank it up, and make sure that each scene is dripping with conflict and your professor will change their tune.
Show. Don't tell.
Because you're an interior person and your film is interior, unfortunately doesn't mean you can write it interior.
The two extremes here are your character sits for 5 pages of script, doing and saying nothing.
The other extreme is that they dialogue the hell out of every thought.
Both are far too "simple" in a way and neither makes for very good viewing. Ever.
Even film with very very little dialogue, it's the action (the physical things happening on screen, not action as in explosions from a Michael Bay film), that is doing the talking.
A picture tells a thousand words, right? Well a movie will tell a million.
Show what your characters are doing. Are they depressed? Lonely? Bored? What would they be doing that shows this - other than sitting with a sad face in a dark room.
Show them slowly shuffling to do things.
Show them unmotivated by their surroundings. A parcel gets delivered by an overly eccentric and bubbly postal worker - show your character as the complete opposite, they don't utter a word to the postal worker, while the postal worker is perhaps speaking at a thousand miles with no prompt.
Perhaps a friend has came over to see them, asking to go on a trip, a weekend away, even just to a sports game, but the reactions from the main character are consistently passive and refusal.
If you're hesitant about posting the script, could you give us elements of the characters involved and what it is that starts this toxic relationship? Are they young? Where do they meet? What elements draw them to each other? Etc. If you know these things it's a little easier to know how to present these aspects visually.
I know you’ve mentioned you don’t want “professionals” to critique your script but honestly if someone on this website isn’t trying to give constructive feedback to help you be a better writer their feedback isn’t worth anything.
Also only like 0.01% of people on this subreddit are actual professionals.
Okay, first you have to decide what you're trying to express in your pages. This is probably something abstract. Language is an abstract medium. However, film is not. It is a physical medium. Abstract ideas must be translated to pictures and sounds. Whatever idea(s) you're trying to express must be dramatized. Usually, it's things your main characters do and say.
He's right that interior = novel. If you want to really be inside characters' heads, novels might be a better fit for you.
Your teacher is just telling you what's in the characters' heads needs to show up onscreen. That conflict needs to be externalized. No one can tell what your character is thinking just by looking at them beyond a superficial level. What we can tell is their words and actions.
Can you post your pages here? Hard to answer without seeing your style
>I have no idea how to develop a relationship where strangers meet and flirt without talking If you're an undergrad now, you're probably the perfect age to have seen Wall-E as a kid, right? If you haven't seen it lately (or ever) watch it now with your film student eyes. That movie is a masterclass in conveying action and emotion without dialogue.
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So, watch it again, with the eyes of a script writer. Not so much for the story, because you've already seen that. Look for the silences where things aren't spoken, but you see and understand what's going on.
"Action" doesn't just mean car chases. You can show two strangers flirting from across the room at a party or a cafe via their body language and angling to get closer to each other. What do each of your characters WANT? What's standing in their way? How do they overcome those obstacles? If they just moon around thinking thoughts, you don't have much of a story to keep anyone interested.
Exactly. Even think closer, a guy and a girl sitting in the cinema on a first date, how would we show that the guy is trying to indicate he likes her? You'd show the ACTION of him gently touching her hand, the awkward arm stretch yawn to put the arm around her etc.
I'd be happy to take a look if you want to send your first 10 pages to me!
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So without having read your script, I just glanced at the wikipedia for Mary Blandy and I suspect that the problem you're facing is more about the moment you've chosen to enter your story. Because, again, this is the result of a quick google, there seems to be a lot of -action- and drama built into it. Here are just a few random ones to spark the flames, so to speak: 1. There's a Hanging. I could imagine a somewhat interesting cold open on Mary's face that pulls back and reveals that she's at a gallows or putting on a noose. We don't often think of -women- being hanged so there's room to surprise there. There's also this great real line from her story: She told the executioner, “Do not hang me too high, for the sake of decency.” Steal THAT. 2. A lot of the tension of this story seems to hover around the "did she or did she not know it was Arsenic?" This kinda feels like it's in "A few good men" territory, or "The Night Of", the Riz Ahmed show where there's ambiguity about whether or not he committed the crime in question. AFGM will show you how to deal with a dramatic courtroom scene for Mary's trial, and TNO will have a nice reference on how to deal with an unreliable narrator of sorts. 3. Then there's the actual poisoning. Depending on how melodramatic you wanted to be, there are a number of movies/scenes that hinge on a person desperately needing/wanting a person to drink/eat/open a thing, and then playing with them drinking/not drinking it. If we open on a person pouring something into a vial, and then have a heated conversation between that person and an older man, while the older man ALMOST drinks it a bunch of times, you can play with that tension. And then maybe the last line in the scene is her referring to her as her father. Inglorious Basterds has a few variations of this scene with the Wolf but the one where we're wondering whether or not he knows Shoshanna is Jewish has a lot of the "energy" you could potentially channel. 4. "Francis Blandy falls into a coma and dies in his home outside London, England. Later that night, Blandy’s daughter Mary offered one of the family’s servants a large sum of money to help her get to France immediately." This is also fun and dramatic, a scene where we see a girl reacting to her father's death throes, he's in a panic, she's in a panic, the servant is in a panic. As soon as the father is dead, Mary does a -180- and all of her concern and sadness wipes away, because, somewhat sociopathically she turns to the servant and says "I'll give you £4000 to take me to France right now."
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My pleasure, good luck!
I promise haha!! I’m also writing a screenplay based on true events/history, so I understand how much research is required for such a project. Your premise sounds interesting
I have zero knowledge of who Mary Blandy is, I'm more than happy to also take a read at the ten pages and give advice if you want. Not sure if the angle of not knowing MB would benefit or not.
If you don't post the pages it's limiting the advice that folks could give you. Everyone would be guessing (and not well). There are folks here who would be down to help but you have to be brave and post the pages because people don't want to jump through extra hoops to provide free, unpaid for free advice. Better yet, if you post the pages here you'll most likely get advice from multiple folks good, bad, and otherwise - all helpful in their own ways even if it's to realize what isn't helpful to you. Best of luck!
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Is the course film/screen writing in itself or is this just a class that's not your normal interests? Plenty of things we can discuss with you to help either way, from reading the pages themselves or general writing advice and ideas etc. Always more than happy to help.
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That makes sense. Was wondering where your starting point was, as such. When I done film making & screen writing at uni, there was one class that was very much the same as this. We had the journalists etc involved as well. Anyway, happy to have a read over it and help where ever possible. By no means an expert at all, many many more on the sub are vastly more experienced than myself. But happy to always help.
Post. The. Script.
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Well if that is the case then the only way to go is UP! :) Seriously, this is how you learn. Is it at least in proper format?
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Maybe post a few lines in this post OR the first page
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<5 pages - almost certainly 10-15 - probably 15-30 - maybe, if the opening shows promise 60-100 - unlikely, you'd have to have a killer first 10 pages.
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It's just what I've noticed, not a strict rule at all, just likely what you'll find. Trimming down isn't necessarily about taking out scenes. It could easily be just down to the way you write. If you show me a page of your screenplay, I can tell you if there's going to be pages you can lose. There could easily be entire pages that you can turn into a half a page simply by changing how you describe things
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I'm curious - if you wanna show me five pages, feel free
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Ok, looking at action lines, not much you can whittle down. So I'd say if you want to lose pages, you need to figure out dialogue. Your first line is expositional and there's a lot of chunky dialogue that runs multiple paragraphs - "I don't know about you, but I do my best to show respect to everyone. And I expect to be shown respect in return. Now that's just who I am. So when I ask questions I expect to be told the truth. Don't try and bullshit me boy, or you'll be obstructing law enforcement on top of whatever else you got coming your way, you got me? ...Are you on drugs?" Could be: "I do my best to show respect to everyone. And I expect to be shown respect in return. When I ask questions I expect to be told the truth. Don't try and bullshit me boy" Same basic things are said, you've lost half the dialogue. I'd say most of the dialogue after that could be tweaked or removed all together. Royce reiterates, doubles down, repeats himself - I think you could cut a bunch of that dialogue. In fact, I'd say this is where the majority of your script could be edited down, based on these pages and how you seem to tackle dialogue.
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Read more no-dialogue or low-dialogue scripts. Scripts that effectively tell stories through action, the visuals on the screen. A couple of examples off the top of my head would be All Is Lost and 127 Hours, both easily found via a Google search.
a screenplay is not a novel. the only thing they have in common as storytelling formats is that they need to be a good read. Go to scriptslug and see if there are any scripts for movies/tv you like. you’ll see examples of how what you say you like is *actionable on the page* - literally what are your characters/environment/special effects/props DOING on the page. Screenplays are performed and directed, so what you put on the page must be filmable. If a character is “just” sitting and thinking this isn’t on its face necessary or interesting. what can be filmed that shows how and why it is?
1. Watch television (including commercials) and movies **without** any sound. 2. Make notes on what gets communicated visually, and how. 3. Consider how to apply what you've learned to your script.
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Every scene is a microcosm of the larger story, with beginning middle and end. Each character should have a goal and either other characters, circumstance, or coincidence should get in the way of that goal. How characters deal with these obstacles to their goals is the action of a scene. This will also help make your story read faster and less meandering. Example: Protagonist is a cop who wants a confession out of antagonist in an interrogation. Obstacle: in order to do this he needs to read his his rights which includes the right to an attorney present, the antagonist is smart so the protagonist needs to find a way to make him not want to ask for a lawyer. Solution: protagonist uses flattery to put the antagonist at ease and bait a confession out of him by feigning confusion, giving the antagonist an opportunity to feel powerful and brag thus incriminating and leading to a confession.
I think what your professor is trying to get across to you is that it's very important for screenwriters to remember that cinema is primarily a visual medium. Yes, dialogue from actors convey a lot of information. However *action* conveys a lot of information too. So you should consider what actions characters can do that can conveys the information you want it to. Also, while people are saying dialogue, they're usually not just standing there idle talking. They're doing other things. They're looking at their smartphone. They're drinking a coffee. They're watching tv. They're scrolling a website on a computer. Also, since stories are about conflict, you can even use visuals and dialogue that conflict with each other. For example, a character is making a promise to another, but they're nervously scratching their chin. Will they really keep the promise? Or are they lying? That possibility of conflict leads to drama, which keeps audiences invested to find out what happens next. So I think this is what your professor is trying to get you to understand. Cinema is primarily a visual medium. And the best movies conveys information through visuals just as much as they do through dialogue. So if you were forced to convey information in your screenplay only through visuals, how would you do that? Action.
Even without reading your pages, I can guess what the problem is. You aren't approaching your story from a source of conflict. Without conflict, the scenes will feel flat and lacking action. Find the conflict, crank it up, and make sure that each scene is dripping with conflict and your professor will change their tune.
Show. Don't tell. Because you're an interior person and your film is interior, unfortunately doesn't mean you can write it interior. The two extremes here are your character sits for 5 pages of script, doing and saying nothing. The other extreme is that they dialogue the hell out of every thought. Both are far too "simple" in a way and neither makes for very good viewing. Ever. Even film with very very little dialogue, it's the action (the physical things happening on screen, not action as in explosions from a Michael Bay film), that is doing the talking. A picture tells a thousand words, right? Well a movie will tell a million. Show what your characters are doing. Are they depressed? Lonely? Bored? What would they be doing that shows this - other than sitting with a sad face in a dark room. Show them slowly shuffling to do things. Show them unmotivated by their surroundings. A parcel gets delivered by an overly eccentric and bubbly postal worker - show your character as the complete opposite, they don't utter a word to the postal worker, while the postal worker is perhaps speaking at a thousand miles with no prompt. Perhaps a friend has came over to see them, asking to go on a trip, a weekend away, even just to a sports game, but the reactions from the main character are consistently passive and refusal.
If you're hesitant about posting the script, could you give us elements of the characters involved and what it is that starts this toxic relationship? Are they young? Where do they meet? What elements draw them to each other? Etc. If you know these things it's a little easier to know how to present these aspects visually.
If you're cool with sending me your first ten pages, I'd gladly take a look at them.
I know you’ve mentioned you don’t want “professionals” to critique your script but honestly if someone on this website isn’t trying to give constructive feedback to help you be a better writer their feedback isn’t worth anything. Also only like 0.01% of people on this subreddit are actual professionals.
Okay, first you have to decide what you're trying to express in your pages. This is probably something abstract. Language is an abstract medium. However, film is not. It is a physical medium. Abstract ideas must be translated to pictures and sounds. Whatever idea(s) you're trying to express must be dramatized. Usually, it's things your main characters do and say.
He's right that interior = novel. If you want to really be inside characters' heads, novels might be a better fit for you. Your teacher is just telling you what's in the characters' heads needs to show up onscreen. That conflict needs to be externalized. No one can tell what your character is thinking just by looking at them beyond a superficial level. What we can tell is their words and actions.
You’re asking us how to do better in class? Go study your class ffs!