Passive Verbs

Passive verbs rape screenplays.

Notice how I phrased that. I didn’t say “Passive verbs are detrimental to screenplays” or “A passive verb is a word that lacks strength.”

No. Passive verbs rape screenplays. Passive verbs mutilate interest and gouge out positive reviews. A verb devoid of action devours a screenplay. And then rapes it.

Now I can hear some of your reactions already. You’re saying “woah, slow down” or “they can’t be that bad” or “what’s with all the raping?”

Passive verbs sedate readers. We’re not writing lullabies, we’re writing screenplays. A verb is a sledgehammer aimed at your reader’s head. And you’re swinging sledgehammer. And what’s the name of the doctor who fixed your rotater cuff so you can swing the sledgehammer?

Dr. Thesaurus.

The thesaurus lends you strength. The thesaurus lights the way and leads you when you stray from the path. The thesaurus is your best friend.

Let’s look at an example.

John Doe watches the poker game from across the bar. He sits, waiting for the dealer to give the signal.

Now imagine 120 pages of that. Snoozefest. So let’s consult our sage and mentor, the Thesaurus. And from the gospel of the Thesaurus, our screenplay reads:

John Doe leers, pupils fixed on the seven-card stud crosswise the saloon. Our silent stalker lingers, ocular chasms anchored upon the gambling deity’s forthcoming alarm, his nerves raped from anticipation.

I hope I’ve made my point.

NEXT TIME: We address the common question “how can I make the most out of film school?” The short answer: “minor in computer science.”

Monologues and Speeches

A great speech is often what is remembered in a great film. From Patton to Scent of a Woman to Independence Day. So what does that mean for aspiring screenwriters?

It means never write speeches.

Speeches are remembered from “films.” They have a beautiful actor with swelling, emotional music in the background. Have you ever read Patton’s speech in text form? Here it is:

Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. HE won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. Men, all this stuff you’ve heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. American’s traditionally, love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. Now, I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Now, an army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that stuff about individuality for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know anything more about real battle than they do about fornicating. Now, we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. You know, by God, I actually pity those poor bastards we’re going up against. By God, I do. We’re not just going to shoot the bastards. We’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel. Now, some of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you’ll chicken-out under fire. Don’t worry about it. I can assure you that you will all do your duty. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood. Shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do. Now there’s another thing I want you to remember. I don’t want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything — except the enemy. We’re going to hold onto them by the hose, and we’re gonna kick him in the ass. We’re gonna kick the hell out of him all the time, and we’re gonna go through him like crap through a goose! Now, there’s one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home, and you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now when you’re sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you, “What did you do in the great World War II?” — you won’t have to say, “Well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana.” Alright now you sons-of-bitches, you know how I feel. Oh, I will be proud to lead you wonderful guys into battle anytime, anywhere. That’s all.

There it is. Did anyone read the whole thing? I know I didn’t. I copied and pasted it from the internet. Didn’t even proofread it.

Now imagine how a reader is going to read your speech. There are going to be no dramatic pauses. No annunciation. No emotion. If you want to get a good idea of how it is going to sound in the reader’s head, speed read it, skip every few words, and do it in Dick Cheney’s voice.

This is the 21st century. F. Scott Fitzgerald is long dead. Poetry in writing is gone and has been replaced with brevity.

Everything in the screenplay needs to read fast. Fast banter. Fast dialogue. Quick. Short sentences. Like this. Fragments. Easy. No thought.

That’s dialogue the reader is gonna breeze through. And if they manage to finish your script and still have a few minutes left on their lunch break, they are going to say it’s the best goddamn thing they’ve ever read.

But your characters do occasionally need opportunities to express themselves. To say how they’re feeling. In those rare cases, remember to use the Tweet rule:

No speeches should be over 140 characters.

Twitter nailed the attention span of the this generation. This isn’t Shakespeare’s day where your choice was to listen to an actor deliver a soliloquy or go back to shoveling horse shit. Millennials are constantly bombarded with opportunities for entertainment. “Busy” doesn’t mean “I have work,” it means “I have too much entertainment to get to. And I haven’t updated my Instagram in 36 hours.”

So let’s go back to that Patton speech. How can we adapt that to our 21st century screenplay? Well let’s set the scene.

Patton struts, perfect posture, as he orates to the soldiers watching.

PATTON: Dying isn’t winning. Killing is winning. So let’s kill those Nazis. Because Americans are winners. Sound good?

Now there’s some dialogue readers will thank you for.

NEXT TIME: Why adverbs hurt you as a writer. Adjectives too. Prepositions and and conjunctions can probably go as well.

The Professional

Any amateur screenwriter knows the pain of meeting a new person and having to explain what they do for a living. Maybe it’s a Thanksgiving dinner with judgmental relatives or a first date with a judgmental stranger.

“I’m a screenwriter.”

“That’s awesome! What movies have you written?”

“Well none that have been made.”

*stares blankly and counting minutes until date is over*

So what are our options for dealing with this situation?

The obvious answer is to lie. Say you’re a freelancer. Or independently employed. Or a nuclear engineer.

But what about when you’re dealing with people who will see through this lie. Or a girl you might want to know beyond a first name basis.

(NOTE: If you’re a female screenwriter this will not be an issue. Wear a low cut v-neck and pretend to care about his life)

Let’s take a moment here to break down what the term “professional” really means.

The conventional answer is that a professional is someone who gets paid.

But is that accurate?

I could go to any bus stop tonight and get paid to satisfy passing truck drivers in the men’s room.

Does that make me a professional escort? Of course it doesn’t.

Professional escorts know how to develop trust and foster a true connection with their clients. And how are they able to do that? Practice, practice, practice.

So how do we become professionals ourselves?

We go back to that bus stop every day, satisfying passing truck drivers with increasing efficiency and effectiveness. We master the craft. The motions and the techniques. The art and the beauty of the act.

We learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others. Through these mistakes we make incremental progress towards perfection. And with weeks of work, months of work, years of work, we become masters of our craft.

Only when we take on that responsibility can we look in the eyes of a loved one or a first date and say “I am a professional escort.”

Screenwriting is the same way. A professional screenwriter isn’t someone who makes money at it. More than likely if you do sell a screenplay, you will never sell another one. If you do it will probably be some soul crushing direct to DVD sequel.

Now let’s go back to the coffee shop on our first date.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a professional screenwriter.”

“Really, what movies have you written?”

“You would think money is what determines professionalism you superficial whore.”

“You’re right, that assumption is dated and incorrect. I respect your assertiveness.”

Nicely done.

NEXT TIME: How to trick women by enrolling in a local computer science class. Or, how to secure your future by enrolling in multiple computer science classes.

Rising Action

If you’ve ever read a book on screenwriting you have surely heard the term “rising action.” But what does it mean?

It means action is rising. But let’s break that down.

What is action? Action is what occurs. It is what happens. Don’t make the mistake of thinking only a character can cause an action. Actions can be caused by the supernatural, the weather, space ships, etc…

You’re reading this right now. Stop and do something. That’s an action.

And this action is rising.

What does that mean? Rising? Well it means it’s being raised.

Like when you’re in church and the pastor says “please rise.” That’s rising. Or what yeast does. That’s also rising.

So that is what our action is doing.

But it’s not just one action. It’s multiple actions. After all, a single action is just that, single. Think of a single action as a point on a map. It isn’t going anywhere. And in order to make our action rise, we must move around the map.

Think of a graph with an X and Y axis. Rising action is moving from point A on the diagram to point B. And while point A is midway up the X and Y axis, point B is further right and up on both the X and Y axis.

And that’s what rising action is. Rising action is movement on an X and Y axis.

Think of a rollercoaster. Rollercoasters go up and then down. Now if a single instance of action is one fixed point on that rollercoaster, rising action would be another single fixed point, higher on the incline of the rollercoaster. Those clicks you hear when you’re going up? That’s rising action.

It’s action that is rising. AKA: Action that is heightening on multiple axes. And while rising may only insinuate up and down motion, we have to keep in mind that action cannot be static, we must always be moving forward in our script. Or, in this metaphor, we must be moving right on the X axis.

Let’s elevate it to the master level. Think of a tesseract. A three dimensional representation of a four dimensional space. Movement within this hypercube is a straightforward way to think of rising action. Let’s take the points in the Euclidean 4-space:

The eight hyperplanes that are bound within the hypercube are visualizations of the edges of our story. As action occurs within this story, it must rise.

So that’s what rising action is. It’s like a rollercoaster or a diagram or map or church or the convex hull of a terreract.

NEXT TIME: We discuss the use of similes and metaphors in explaining writing. It’s sort of like an internet search engine. Or a set of antique bowls. Or a dog that smells wet.

The Parenthetical

A character’s dialogue must be nuanced, subtle, layered. Word choice and tone are used to hide insecurities, true feelings, fears, etc…

The challenge is therefore: how to make this clear to the reader, who, as we learned in the last entry, is apathetic, bored, or (best case scenario) an idiot.

There are a couple ways to convey true meaning. Let’s take this line of dialogue as an example.

SARAH: Oh my goodness Diane, I love your dress.

What’s your first reaction? “Wow, Sarah’s a big fan of Diane’s dress.”

However, if you’re trained in screenwriting or you’ve ever talked to a woman before, you know that’s not true.

Sarah hates Diane’s dress. It’s tacky and makes her butt look flat. Plus Sarah knows Diane has been talking shit behind her back even though she can’t prove it because Kayla said Diane laughed at a joke Lauren made even though it wasn’t funny but just passive aggressive. Which doesn’t make sense because Sarah supported Lauren emotionally when Lukas broke up with her.

Now how do we convey all of those emotions Sarah is juggling into our line of dialogue “Oh my goodness Diane, I love your dress.”

We have a couple options. The first is to use action description to convey this.

Perhaps before Sarah’s dialogue we have an action description line reading:

Sarah looks Diane’s dress up and down, noticing the tacky floral patterns.

Let’s review what our reader just got out of that line of dialogue as they were speed reading…

“Sarah… dress… noticing… patterns…”

Wow, they didn’t catch very much.

However we cannot use our reader’s multitasking as an excuse to not write the screenplay. After all, there is a small chance that they’re actually what you wrote.

So how do we drive home that Sarah is a fake friend whose insecurities are causing her to be passive aggressive?

The answer is the parenthetical. Every writer’s dream.

In screenwriting, before dialogue, you can put a couple words inside a parenthesis to indicate how the line should be said.

For example:

SARAH (sarcastic): Oh my goodness Diane, I love your dress.

Problem solved. It’s a get out of jail free card for writers.

Not sure how to suggest how the dialogue should be said? Parenthetical.

Don’t want the action description to seem heavy handed or novelistic? Parenthetical.

Hungover and on a tight deadline? Parenthetical.

Parentheticals can even be used to suggest feelings in addition to tone. For instance:

SARAH (insecure): It’s fine that Tom didn’t call me back because I’m happy just being single.

Now its the actor’s, director’s, and editor’s problem of figuring out how to convey that Sarah is insecure. Best of luck boys.

The parenthetical is not only a get out of jail free card but also a way of getting your point across as your reader tries to imagine the hot intern naked. So remember, when it doubt? Parenthetical.