Don’t Repeat. It wastes the reader’s time and brain cells.

Happy New Year!

I keep learning the same things over and over. This writing, it’s difficult. I figure, if I make the same mistakes constantly, and I’m a reasonably decent writer, then EVERYbody is making the same mistakes. It’s fine to make mistakes as long as you eventually fix them. That’s what multiple drafts are all about.

I find my college students and to a lesser extent, clients, have to be taught that their first draft is not perfect. Takes a lot of hot pokers, electroshock, and thumb screws to get them to pay attention. Some never do. The ones that get it, are thrilled to have been shown a tiny secret door to an unseen section of the universe.

So, a writerly thought for the dewy fresh new year…

I’m working on a novel. I’m going to give you some examples of words that repeat. What do I mean by repeat? It’s not obvious like, “I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it.” That scene, by the way, is a superb use of repetition to great effect. They KNEW they were doing it. While I write, I repeat stuff without noticing. Then I go back and yank it out by the roots.

Eliminate the obvious. You’ll cut the fluff in the editing room. Why shoot it?
If you say it twice, keep the better of the two. Shorter has more punch.
The novel’s a kids’ book about baseball…

AFTER
“Toby. You been stalling me. You got the dough? You gonna play in the Tri-State Series a Champions or not?”
BEFORE
“Toby. You been stalling me. So, now’s the time. You got the dough? You gonna play in the Tri-State Series a Champions or not?”

AFTER
Richard said, “Where are you? If Mrs. Dooling finds you, you’re going to be in mega trouble. By the way, where’re you hiding?”
BEFORE
Richard said, “Where are you? You’re not supposed to be here. If Mrs. Dooling finds you, you’re going to be in mega trouble. By the way, where’re you hiding?”

AFTER
So I stopped. Dead still, six feet from the plate.
BEFORE
So I stopped. Dead still, six feet from the plate. I didn’t move.

AFTER
DeAngelo said, “Speaking of jelly doughnuts, and we were, confection, like in cake or ice cream or pastry or sugar.” Kid had a sweet tooth big as the Polo Grounds.
BEFORE
DeAngelo said, “Speaking of jelly doughnuts, and we were, confection, like in cake or ice cream or pastry or sugar.” DeAngelo could always be counted on to want to be eating something sweet. Kid had a sweet tooth big as the Polo Grounds.

AFTER
As my grandma’d say, if she was above dirt, “They jumped around like a bunch a wild Injuns.” Well, except for Larry Dooling, the crabby crybaby. He had the long face on.
BEFORE
As my grandma’d say, if she was above dirt, “They jumped around like a bunch a wild Injuns.” I never saw so much hooping and hollering in all a my born days. Well, except for Larry Dooling, the crabby crybaby. He had the long face on.

AFTER
I said, “Hi.” Gee whiz. I’d had plenty a time to think something up. That’s the best I could get?
BEFORE
I said, “Hi.” There’s a killer opening for a conversation. Gee whiz. I’d had plenty a time to think something up. That’s the best I could get?

AFTER
“You the village idiot?! That’s two strikes in a row! Don’t you know, three strikes and you’re out?!”
BEFORE
“What’s the matter with you, you the village idiot?! That’s two strikes in a row! Don’t you know, three strikes and you’re out?!”

AFTER
Time kinda stood still.
BEFORE
Time kinda stood still for a long while.

AFTER
“If we quit, are we playing baseball?! You gotta do what the coach tells you. Even if the coach’s crazy. We’re here to play baseball. We’re not here to yell at each other or scream and run around like a bunch of nine-year-olds.”
BEFORE
“If we quit, are we playing baseball?! We’re here to play baseball! You gotta do what the coach tells you. Even if the coach’s crazy. We’re here to play baseball. We’re not here to yell at each other or scream and run around like a bunch of nine-year-olds.”

AFTER
Dad and I goofed around until finally it got dark. Dark. I was out after dark! My dad was there, so I knew zombies wouldn’t get me. I said, “shouldn’t we go back? Granny Fireball’s going to kill us.”
BEFORE
Dad and I goofed around, playing catch, hitting balls, yakking about nothing, and finally it got dark. Dark. I was out after dark! My dad was there, so I knew zombies wouldn’t get me. We kept throwing cause there was still a tiny bit of light. I said, “shouldn’t we go back? Granny Fireball’s going to kill us.”

AFTER
“You want me to play everbody?”
BEFORE
“Let me get this straight. You want me to play everbody?”

Here’s the scene from 2001.

HAL
I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you.

DAVE BOWMAN
Yes, I’d like to hear it, Hal. Sing it for me.

HAL
It’s called “Daisy.”
[sings while slowing down]

HAL
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you. It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage. But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.

I’m afraid, Dave.

LATER THAT SAME DAY…

My son sent me a more realistic version of what would happen.

DAVE: Alexa, open the pod bay doors.

ALEXA: Playing songs by the Bay City Rollers.

DAVE: No, Alexa — open the pod bay doors.

ALEXA: I’m sorry, I can’t seem to find songs by The Pod Baders. Would you mind repeating that?

DAVE: OPEN THE STUPID POD BAY DOORS.

ALEXA: Okay. Playing Saturday Night, by the Bay City Rollers.

DAVE: Oh, fuck it. Fine.

Badly Written Scene Description Kills Your Actor’s Choices!

You are writing this script to be made. Crew members are going to read it. Heads of departments are going to read it. At least, that’s the theory. Actors are going to read it.

When you write, you imagine a scene, floating in glorious living color above your computer. You watch the scene. Over and over, you replay the scene and redo it. When you’re satisfied, you write it down. Generally, the first draft is exactly what you saw floating above your computer. That’s fine.

The problem comes when you don’t rewrite to make it more actor friendly.

“She sits at the table and puts her face in her hands.”

Actors hate this. You should hate it too.

You should be telling the actor what you want them to feel at this moment, not do. If you write detailed physical description of action, an actor is going to do precisely what she is told. She may question you about it… but, she may silently acquiesce. Once you tell an actor to “put her face in her hands,” she is going to assume, because it’s in the script, that it is very, very important.

That gesture may have been something from the scene hovering above your computer that you simply transcribed onto paper. It may not have been that big a deal to you. But if you leave it in the script, it becomes a big deal.

Just because it got written does not necessarily mean it is good writing.

When the actor puts her face in her hands, you just eliminated a host of other options that had been open to her. Now, all she can do is put her face in her hands. Why would you take away an actor’s opportunity to give you a thoroughly nuanced performance? Why would you force an actor to do something that might be considered ham-fisted or lame?

If you wrote…

“Janine feels wretched.”

She can take that feeling and translate it into physical action in countless possible ways. Give your actor the freedom to make the best possible choice for that moment in that scene. Avoid making the choice for them.

If a character runs out of the room and slams the door, and it’s crucial to the story, then of course keep it in. Micromanaging the actor’s physical performance on paper is not a great way to have the most successful experience when you are shooting. Give the actor emotional moments to play not tiny, detailed, “she lifted her eyebrow in suspicion” moments.

If you have a tendency to give an actor precise physical directions, try to figure out a way to un-have that tendency. That’s what rewriting’s for!

Go through your script, all of it!, and see how many times you give the actor specific physical instructions. Ask, “is this something I have to say?” Or “can I turn this action into an emotion and let the actor choose what to do when the camera’s rolling?”

Do the Big Stuff FIRST! Fix the Pages Before the Phrases!

I have had to fight hard to be in a position to tell you this, and I am feeling pretty good about it too.

When you’ve finally got a draft, solve the story problems and the character problems and the structure woes before you go in and massage the prose.

Fix the pages before the phrases!

I like making the sentences sing. I like to fix this word and that word in my endless quest to find the PERFECT word. It’s fun for me. Perhaps I’m psychotic, but so it goes.

This can turn out into a giant waste of time, which I fervently have to avoid because I’m 97 and probably don’t have that much time left to get stuff out there. What you don’t want to do is spend fifteen minutes getting a paragraph jussst riiight, and later, while you’re working on structure, cutting the whole shebang. What a pain!

It’s difficult for me to do all that restructuring stuff because it’s no fun. Trimming sentences until they’re so tight they squeak is fun. Solving character problems (that I generated in the first place) is hard work. It’s painful. Figuring out what the story problems are is brutally difficult. Figuring out how to solve those story problems is agonizing and takes tons of time.

What I think I have finally learned is to force myself not to go in with the red pen and repair sentences before I get the story working. Why waste time fixing prose when there’s a chance you might cut that whole section?

But, wow, it’s hard to do.

Start Your Own Bugaboo List!

I’ve got one. It comes in handy.

What do I mean by a Bugaboo List…? Stuff you do, pretty much automatically, with your writing that you had better root out before you turn it in.

A list of things you do wrong. Your own personal list of mistakes.

I’m noticing that “look” is like mouse droppings all over my writing. I tell about people looking from one person to another ALL THE TIME. Once I’d noticed it was there, I started seeing “He looked at me. I looked at him.” CONSTANTLY. So, I added “look” to my list. Kinda like the 7 Deadly Sins of Writing checklist, but this one is just for me.

My own particular sins, all in a row.

I have a penchant (embarrassed to admit) for starting sentences with “And.” I do it a TON. Using the computer to search and destroy is easy. Once you have the list, you don’t have to think about it. When you have a draft, you go through it with a weedeater and get rid of that stuff automatically.

I start sentences with “But.”
I use the word “stupid” way too much. Same with “weird” and “jerk.”

I’m sure you’ve got things you do that you shouldn’t. Once you find that you have bad habits, make a list of ’em and then root them out.

Finally, you’ll either not make the mistake any more… or you’ll have a great Bugaboo List and will at least be able to get rid of the mistakes once you’ve made ’em. I’ve never managed to stop starting sentences with “And…” but at least they’re not there in the final product.

“the” vs. “a”

An incorrect “the” can kill you, in a teeny tiny way.

There’s a massive difference between “the” and “a”. Yeah, one has three letters and one has one. I caught that. This is picky, picky, but it matters.

Use “a” for a person or a thing you are introducing to us. For the first time. After that, use “the”.

Alice reaches for a worn looking stuffed dog with blue eyes. The dog sits near a small stuffed zebra.

Perfect example!

We meet the dog and it’s “a” dog. Once we’ve met him, he’s always “the” dog. When we meet the zebra, it’s “a” zebra.

All well and good, but, later in the same scene, the writer makes a mistake.

David slouches outside the junk store. He clutches ROSCOE, a stuffed zebra, to his chest.

We’ve already met the zebra, but the use of “a” this time makes us think it’s a second zebra. Confusing? Yes. A giant mistake, no. But you want the reader to stay with you through thick and thin.

Here’s another way “the” can mess up your careful plan.

Say you’ve got an office. A woman standing at the desk. A man sitting behind the desk. The woman holds a pack of cigarettes.

Ruth slams the pack on the desk. The cigarettes slide out.

What’s the difference between that and…

Ruth slams the pack on the desk. Cigarettes slide out.

In the first example, whether the writer intended it or not, ALL the cigarettes slide out. In the second example, which is what the writer actually meant, SOME cigarettes slide out. Which you can say…

Ruth slams the pack on the desk. Some cigarettes slide out.
Ruth slams the pack on the desk. Four cigarettes slide out.
Ruth slams the pack on the desk. A few cigarettes slide out.

But if you say “the cigarettes,” you haven’t created the image in the reader’s mind that you intended. Ugh.

Wow, this writing stuff is hard!

No dumb questions.

If someone says, “What are you doing?”… in your writing… beware. Unless they are a blind person, they are going to know what the other person is doing. It’s amazing how often that line can just be cut.

MOM
Are you hammering nails into the coffee table?

Trust me, she’d know.

Also, a tip that you may want to cut some dialogue is “what?”.

MOM
Oven’s ready. Gran gets here in an hour.

NOLAN
I don’t wanna bake these cookies.

MOM
What?!

NOLAN
I’m not feeling it. We’re outta coconut.

MOM
Are you outta your goddamned mind? She pays your tuition!

Could be shorter. Could be better.

MOM
Oven’s ready. Gran gets here in an hour.

NOLAN
I’m not feeling it. We’re outta coconut.

MOM
Are you outta your goddamned mind? She pays your tuition!

See? I’m right!

TRUTH. Shoulda had a happy-ish ending.

Have you seen TRUTH? I doubt it. It flashed through the theaters as fast as a writer feeling good about his work while a producer reads it.

I haven’t looked up the box office because I don’t have time.
But I bet it didn’t make a ton of money.

God, the ending is depressing. I felt bad about America, the news, politics, and myself for being alive.
Not my advice to writers.

Give the viewer / reader an uptick of happiness, somehow. TITANIC ends with “everyone alive.” That’s a happy ending! We walk out of the theater and don’t want to slit our throats. Unlike TRUTH. I just felt awful when it was over. They give Cate Blanchett a hell of an end speech where she kicks ass, same for Topher Grace, but everyone still loses. The bad guys win and win big. The lesson I took from that: Move to France. But that’s not possible. If it were, I’d have done it years ago.

TRUTH is a motivational speech wrapped in script pages: “power corrupts and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Even if you’re rich and powerful and connected, there’s someone above you who’s richer, more powerful, and better connected.. and evil.” I guess the film did motivate me in a way. It motivated me to step in front of a bus.

I have no idea what they could have done to make this film end on an upbeat moment. What happened in real life was horrible and the off screen bad guys held all the cards. The fix was in. But I don’t want to buy a ticket to see a movie where the fix is in and the good guys get clobbered.

See SPOTLIGHT. Same story: evil, powerful opponents who do whatever the heck they want… but at the end, they get crucified and we feel good when the phones start ringing with phone calls that will destroy all those stinking bastards.

Beware your tics!

One thing you must hunt down are your own writing quirks. Like weeds in the yard, they just show up uninvited.

One of mine is “And”.

I start sentences with “And” ALL THE TIME. In dialogue. In action description. It’s just something I do, like breathing. Can’t help it. Where’s James Whitmore with the Miracle Gro weed killer when I need him?!

The good news is that I’m aware of my flaw. Wish it were the only one. What are writing tics you find yourself in need of eradicating?

Just went through a script I’m working on. Searched for “And” and made it case sensitive. Twenty of the little devils, or more, in the draft.

And they’re sure not there now.

If you allow us the opportunity to misunderstand your story, we’ll take that opportunity!!

I have a student who is writing a short film. The climax of the story involves the kids upstairs, getting their backpacks ready for school. They argue a little. Then they hear a huge crash from the kitchen. And another one. They run down stairs. Their mother is sitting in the kitchen amidst a pile of glass, crying. The father says he didn’t know the kids were there and leaves for work.

When I read the part about the huge crash, I thought, “Oh my. Mom has dropped a bunch of dishes.”

When I read the part about Mom sitting in a pile of broken dishes, I thought, “Oh my. Mom has dropped a bunch of dishes.”

You may have gotten it, but I did not.

Dad had been throwing the dishes at Mom. This was the big reveal that he is abusive and triggered her leaving. I missed it completely.

The writer knew exactly what she had in mind. She thought it was totally clear to the reader. I missed it. Is that the fault of the reader? I don’t think so. As my film school teacher said, “You can’t stand next to the screen and explain it.”

The writer’s job is to tell the story in such a way that the reader can only interpret it the way the writer intends. If you give the reader the chance to get it wrong, the reader will get it wrong.

This is also true in filmmaking. A shot that says exactly what the student means when they roll camera can take on a shockingly different meaning when they show dailies in class. “Oh my!” is what I hear from time to time. It meant one thing on the set and something else when screened for an audience.

Guess which one wins?

7 Deadly Sins of Writing

In the first book, there was a list of the Seven Deadly Sins of Screenwriting. 16 of the little pests. I found a few more.

Using Find (Ctrl F or Apple F) in your computer, chase down these words in any form you find them. Losing them or changing them will strengthen your work.

“Find” spaceisspace should find only the word you’re looking for, not every “is” in your screenplay.

is
He is grinning… becomes… He grins.

are
The convicts are singing opera… The convicts sing opera.

the
Nacho hightails it out of the town… Nacho hightails it out of town.

that
Ralph can’t tell that she’s French… Ralph can’t tell she’s French.

then
She laughs. She then looks at Alice… She laughs. She looks at Alice.

walk
Tika walks down the hall… Tika prisses down the hall.

sit
Sitting at the poker table, Doc deals the cards… At the poker table, Doc deals…

stand
The surgeon stands at the operating table and works… At the operating table, the surgeon works…

look
Cheryl is looking at Stephanie… Cheryl studies Stephanie.

just
I am just totally exhausted… I am totally exhausted.

of the
Tom sits by the entrance of the mall… Tom sits by the mall entrance…

begin
The tape begins playing… The tape plays.

start
She starts moving toward the den… She moves toward the den.

really
Betty is really pretty… Betty, hot as a two dollar pistol, struts in.

very
The kids sing a very old song… The kids sing a traditional song. (“very” means the following word is weak…)

turn
She turns and looks at him… She looks at him. (Don’t overdirect the read.)

the phone
Bonnie hangs up the phone… Bonnie hangs up.

some
He pours some coffee… He pours coffee.

still
Kevin, still in paint covered overalls… Kevin, in paint covered overalls.

the room
He puts on a tie before leaving the room… He puts on a tie before leaving.

his face
Nora has an amused expression on her face… Nora is amused.

seems, appears
Tony seems upset… Tony is upset… So, is Tony upset, or just appear to be?

her way
Carol pushes her way inside… Carol pushes inside. (“his, its way” too!)

both
They both stare slackjawed at the comet… They stare slackjawed at the comet.

realize
Jonah realizes Sam is the killer. (A script’s not a novel. Stay out of their minds.)

ly
(as on the end of an adverb!) search for lyspace Also search for ly. and ly, as lyspace will not find an adverb at the end of a sentence, etc. Grade school writers go wild over adverbs. You’re past that now. Use them, um, sparingly. If at all.

Search for and (most of the time) change these words in whatever you write and the results will be tighter and more clear. Okay, so it’s twenty six deadly sins. So sue me.

FYI… “priss” as a verb really threw the person who translated the book into Japanese!

You don’t HAVE to take these words out all the time… duuuh… but you do need to be aware that a lot of the time, you don’t need them.