New answers tagged screenwriting
1
I would have just commented, but I am too low for that at the moment.
I wanted to add that one reason for this format is the viewer can now focus on the relationships that are forming in the background. The humor of how House relates to his team, the drama of his drug abuse, the ups and downs of his romantic relationships -- all this develops because you ...
0
I normally use repetitions when I want to emphasize something. Use repetitions in those examples, for me, would not be a good practice.
Just as an example.
I thought about it. I thought about it deeply, and realized it
was not the way.
In your example phrases, I would go for something like Dale suggested.
Alex looks around. The room is almost empty...
...
1
Why not simply describe the FX you want.
Footsteps on gravel, rusty metal gate opening, reverberating gunshot, scream of pain is far more useful in a screenplay than Crunch, Creak, Kapowee, Aaaagh. Unless of course you are writing a comic book.
0
Consider screech, clang, clank, groan.
• screech, “A high-pitched strident or piercing sound, such as that between a moving object and any surface.”
• clang, “A loud, ringing sound, like that made by free-hanging metal objects striking each other.”
• clank, “A loud, hard sound of metal hitting metal. Usage note: Clank usually expresses a duller or less ...
1
Your first example is a not a grammatical sentence. It is a comma splice. It uses a comma to join two independent clauses.
Your third example uses repetition. Repetition serves to emphasize the thing that's repeated. It also introduces a kind of rhythm into the sentence.
Repetition is grammatically acceptable. Whether it's a good idea depends on whether ...
2
For a screenplay, it is probably more important to be clear than to have excellent, flowing prose. (I'm not a screenwriter.) For the more-general case of descriptive prose, however, one approach is to convert "they are" verbal clauses to adjectival clauses. Instead of:
Hundreds of people are standing and looking at the on-coming train. Their sweating ...
0
Somebody already suggests but I'm really satisfied with Latex.
It's distraction free, can be used in ANY text editor you want and has the BIG advantage of separating formatting from content. In my case, I just created my own class to have the final document formatted as I want.
Another huge advantage is that, since it's plain text, you may threat it as ...
1
There are two classic good, satisfactory approaches to ending a story. Let me call them "Less is More" and "Afterglow."
"Less is more" ends before the key point - possibly seconds or hours before it. The text built a rich story in the reader's head, there were many threads that converged towards one single point. Then the explicit story, the one told to the ...
6
If you didn't create an outline — that is, if you didn't know beforehand how it was going to end — then you're suffering from impeded arborvision (you can't see the forest for the trees).
1) Put it in a drawer and don't read it for a month. Come back with fresher eyes. You'd be amazed what you catch.
2) Hand it off to someone else and ask your ...
Top 50 recent answers are included
