Re-writing

This post is a rip-off rewrite mash-up of several online articles and posts.  At the end is a link to Terry Rossio's original post I scavenged for this.  Other bits and pieces are from notes I've made over the months. 

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1 - BEATS

Quite often the first draft of something has the right beats in the right place ... but it's easy for them to be too subtly played or too quickly played. Do ... interesting, juicy bits flash by too quickly, leaving you wanting more?  Some story elements are just blossoming, and need to be allowed to expand; others are dying on the vine and need to be pruned away.

Are some beats are just plain missing?  Do you need backstory to help motivations, plot events to help justify action? Or is the goal in a script to explore as many of the permutations of the topic or theme as possible?  

2  - PACING

That sense of being motivated to go on to the next scene, and spinning out of that scene to the next. Look out for the 'unmotivated cut'; when a scene ends, taking us away from a place we wanted to be, sending us to a place we don't want to be. One of the tricks is to have stuff happening off screen that is not so interesting we feel we missed out on seeing it ... but have enough happening off screen that we still feel like 'stuffs going on' and the film is doing the best it can to keep up. That's one way to give a film pace, and momentum.

Make a script a page-turner by:

The careful, premeditated disclosure of information while always promising new information.

3 - SCENES

 Often scenes exist, or sections of scenes, that are the result of the writer 'writing' his way into the story. They're needed for the writer to ramp up into the scene ... but ultimately, you want to cut the 'ramp.' 

Every scene should have some kind of major or minor objective, or imperative, danger, something at issue; a threat or concern, or secret, or conflict.

Every scene should move the story forward by conveying at least one of these things:

• new information
• new story beat
• evolution of a relationship
• play out a story thread

Many, many scenes can be pushed. They're fine scenes ... but can the conflict be greater, the clash more intense, the argument stronger? First drafts are sometimes correct, but polite.

4 - DIALOGUE

Every spoken word of a script should be said out loud. Take out those unnecessary words and ellipses and dashes and wrylies. Put in great lines that depend on subtext, even if they are only one word. There is a place for the great actor-attracting speech or the Oscar-winning monologue. 

5 - ACTION

Every descriptive passage in a script should be read out loud, to make sure it lands on the brain in a good way.  This is pruning time. This is finding the evocative single word. 

6 - TRANSITIONS

Track your transitions from scene to scene.  Does the audience have a second to adjust?  Is there contrast or continuity? If the next scene is supposed to shock or startle, are you dulling it with too much lead-in?

7 - SLUGLINES

Are they formatted consistently relative to one another?  Did you change the time and forget to make NIGHT into DAY?  Are they clear enough for the reader to know where they are?  Do they actually match what is below them?

Did you change scenes and forget to include a slugline to indicate that? 

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Rossio on rewriting.