The only thing worse than a TV script or screenplay that’s overwritten is a stage play. Plays have no length requirement so the playwright has free rein to torture us long into next month. When a two character piece about what to pack for a vacation is longer than NICHOLAS NICKLEBY that should be a clue.
And then there’s the dialogue.
This may sound obvious but worth stating anyway: Always remember that actors have to perform your script.
Soooo many times I’ll see full page speeches with sentences so long and complicated that no human being on earth could ever deliver them. And certainly not in one breath. Read your script out loud. If you need CPR by the end of a speech, rethink. Dialogue has to sound natural, conversational. And rarely do we speak in big whoppin’ speeches.
When writing a TV spec, writers often go overboard on character quirks. They’ll hear Frasier utter something a little flowery and think that every word out of his mouth has to be Noel Coward. In fairness, shows themselves get caught up in that trap. On MASH the tendency to give every line a spin evolved into absurdity. In a later season (after I had left the s
eries) Potter once said to Klinger, “It was curiosity that KO’d the feline.” WTF?? Who would ever say that? And why?There is a tendency to want to impress by working in all kinds of complex themes and philosophies – show how you’re the next Paddy Chayefsky. In truth, it’s your inexperience not intellect that’s being put on display. If long intricate theories and complicated Byzantine ideas are your cup of tea, write a book.
More often than not these long speeches have characters express in detail their emotions and attitudes. Not only is it taxing to listen to this balloon juice it also gives the actor nothing to play. Might as well go on to the next scene. Sometimes a look or a gesture can say volumes more a two page speech that James Joyce would find too convoluted.
Whenever my partner, David and I go back to polish a draft we thin out the big speeches. If the speech is 14 lines we make it 11, if it’s 11 lines we make it 9. There are ALWAYS trims.
Same is true in stage direction. A reader sees a big block of stage direction I GUARANTEE he will not read it. You could describe a sex act in detail and he’ll flip the page.
As a rule it’s better to underwrite than overwrite. We have an expression. We like “open pages”. Much more white than type. This may sound obvious too but: You don’t get paid by the word.
Go back through your script. I bet you could lose two pages. Writer/blogger extraordinaire Earl Pomerantz always maintained that you could lose page 8 from any script. He's right!
18 comments :
Having worked mostly in episodic TV I will tell you that 55 pages is the perfect length for a one hour script. Any more than that I (Wardrobe Supervisor) would cringe.
Speaking of overwriting, rewrites and the like, my romantic comedy "Stand Tall!" (102 pages long after numerous edits) will have a table read Sunday from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. (Daylight Time, remember) at Tea Pop, 5050 Vineland Avenue, North Hollywood. I'd enjoy meeting you folks -- not only my fellow writers, but actors and (potential) producers.
A reader sees a big block of stage direction I GUARANTEE he will not read it.
I own a number of DICK VAN DYKE SHOW scripts, and some of those have pretty extensive stage directions. Exactly the kind of "big blocks" you write that we should stay away from. In "My Husband Is Not a Drunk," for example, the one where a post-hypnotic suggestion makes Rob act tipsy whenever he hears a bell ring, the stage directions during Van Dyke's drunk scenes are pretty extensive and quite detailed. Carl Reiner apparently wasn't inclined to leave things to chance or simply rely on Van Dyke's ability to ad-lib. I've seen some I LOVE LUCY scripts that similarly have lengthy blocks of stage directions.
Is it sad that I know exactly what episode that MASH quote is from? For the record it's from the episode "Old Soldiers" from Season 8.
Two things:
--Ken might know whether this is true, given that it involved Larry Gelbart. I once read that when the script for the film version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was complete, it was way too long, so the producers had the bright idea of eliminating the directions that had been inserted. Brilliant.
--Let us all rise in memory of Steven Hill, who was so brilliant as Adam Schiff on Law & Order. He once said he told the writers not to give him a sentence when they could give him a word, and not to give him a word when they could give him an expression. And that is what helped make him and his character so perfect.
David S - Wish I could see those scripts, they sound fantastic!!
David S - Would love to get my hands on those scripts for DVD show! sounds fabulous. And that was one of my favourite episodes!
I've seen scripts written for stage plays by newbie writers that just go nuts with directions. Every line of dialogue comes with instructions on how the line should be read. Where the emphasis should go. Every move the actors make, every turn of their head, is all there in the script, in painstaking detail. Every emotion and change of mood is written out. I guess it happens because these writers have lived with their script for a long time and can see it in their head, exactly how they visualize it all should be played out. And being new, they haven't yet learned that the fastest way to tick off an actor is to tell her how to deliver her lines and to play her part. I guess they haven't yet learned that at some point you have to give up that control and trust the actors and the director. Give them the essentials in your script and let them do the rest. Besides, the actors are going to ignore your detailed instructions on line readings, anyway.
I like the line "it was curiousity that KO'ed the feline."
Of course, it's no match for Potter's best line, "Sorry doesn't feed the bulldog!"
I saw Dick Van Dyke at a live book signing/Q & A when his book came out a couple of years ago. Somebody asked him about ad-libbing on "The Dick Van Dyke Show," and he said that it rarely happened. That those scripts were very tightly written and that all the physical stuff was very carefully worked out and rehearsed before they ever filmed anything. Which seemed to surprise some of the people in the audience, who apparently thought the cast just went out there and made up most of it as they went along.
"Use Less Words"
-- A note Stuart McLean kept in his office, where he would write, re-write, re-write again (at least a half-dozen times, he once calculated) every one of his "Vinyl Cafe" radio stories.
I suspect that when Ken talks about stage directions, he doesn't have in mind the kind of elaborate visual set pieces that Lucy and Van Dyke did. Those are a different animal from ordinary stage directions and, by their nature, need to be more detailed. (There's one Lucy Show script I've seen where the last fifteen or so pages is ALL stage direction. There's no dialogue in the last half of the show.) I think the stage directions Ken means are the more mundane ones. MAX EXITS TO HIS OFFICE. SARAH SLAMS THE BOWL DOWN ON THE TABLE. Some less experienced writers will get a paragraph out of the simplest direction. We don't need a description of Sarah's inner turmoil or an analysis of her frame of mind. Just write what you want her to do, in as few words as possible. The actors will take care of the rest.
Proud to report that I've just finished writing a full-length two-character play that clocked in at 35 pages! I'll never forget the first time I edited one of my own scripts. It was a screenplay about 124 pages long and I had to trim it down to 120 pages in order to enter it in a competition. I made a few minor trims then agonized as to whether or not to cut a 3-page scene, not because I thought my writing was so brilliant but because I thought it connected the scenes it was in between and that if I jumped directly from the preceding scene to the succeeding scene it would look awkward and/or not make sense. Well, I took the scene out, showed the script to a few people whom I trusted and NOBODY noticed the cut.
Michael,
It's funny, I was thinking about Steven Hill as I read that. I read that same thing about him, and he and his character were great.
I liked the Potter line too. But it lives on people knowing the cliche and the speaker taking the variation.
That was one of the things I really despised about Late M*A*S*H -- the overly flowery language they used, especially for Colonel Potter. One of the things I really liked about his earlier seasons was what a down-to-earth character he was... and they threw that away with the silly speech patterns.
"Sorry don't feed the bulldog" is an old expression. I think of it as southern as I heard it from Andy Griffith (not personally) and relatives in Georgia, but that hardly proves it's exclusive to the south.
Stage directions are a vital part of any script unless perhaps it's something like "I'm Not Rappaport," where it's just two guys sitting on a park bench and schmoozing. Anyone who doesn't take this into account when reading a script (especially a page-counter) is not behaving professionally.
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