10PTT: Diggers by Mark Atwater

[Pitchpatch]

NOTE: This was the first 10PTT ever, reproduced here from the old site.  Script pages used by permission of the author.

THE TEN PAGE TORTURE TEST

"Ten pages have you. Beyond that it matters not. Already decided the Reader is. For he who -- no, I'm sorry, this isn't -- I'm sorry. Sondra, it's --"

"CUT! Back to one, everybody. Again."

"It's the fucking wookie."

"If you say so, Robert. Ten minutes ago it was the dry ice or whatever coming off the swamp."

"C'mon, Sondra. Look at you. You got on those kick-ass director boots and I've got bare feet. I'm totally exposed to the elements from the ankles down. Have you stood where I'm standing, Sondra? Because then you'd know dry ice burns like a mutherfucker. That shit is cold."

"Rob, it's perfectly safe. It can't hurt you."

"There, you see that? What is that, Sondra? Wait, I know. That's my toenail peeling the fuck off my foot! A perfectly good toenail until I walked on set today and got scorched by that mutherfucking dry ice. Now what do I do? Mutherfucking toenail just hanging there all floppy like an old lady's cooch. Is Makeup and Wardrobe gonna fix that?"

"Tim! Get Beth and Ricky for a touch up."

"Forget it, Sondra. Can't fix an old lady's cooch."

"All right, but twenty minutes ago it was Boba Fett, like, catching your eye and whatnot."

"It wasn't just... OK, let me clue you in about why I'm here. See, I'm trying to do my thang -- it's called 'acting' -- and Boba Fett's walking around all la-de-da-de-da like this in the background. What the fuck is it with him? He has no idea about, hey, it's fucking distracting having somebody walk up behind Vader in the middle of the fucking scene."

"That's how we blocked it. He was in the scene!"

"Well, that's your opinion."

"My opinion that he was acting in a scene with you? Look, forget all that. What's up this time? You mentioned the wookie."

"Oh, what's up with Chewbacca? Interesting choice of words. Here we are on the fifth take --"

"Sixteenth --"

"We're on the sixteenth take for this shot, and every time he picks me up off the rock and puts me on his lap, whaddayaknow, the big furry ape's got wood."

"Like... you mean an erection?"

"He's got wood, Sondra! There's a bulge under the carpet. His bipod has become tripod."

"No, that's... it's your imagination. The wookie costume has all kinds of stiff panels and --"

"He put his thumb up my butt."

"... Robert, that's a very serious accusation. If you're making this up because you don't want to play Yoda, that would also be a very serious breach of contract."

"Maybe not his thumb. It was hairy and cylindrical. Thumb is my best-case scenario."

"We had this conversation two weeks ago. I told you. We cast Han Solo a month before your audition. That role was off the table. You could've passed on this movie, but you begged for a role and we gave you Yoda. Nobody forced you into it."

"Aw c'mon. I did it because I thought you'd change your mind and give me Han. Sondra, I need to be cool for once. I need this. Yoda's for the geeks. I need a role like Han. I want the girls to look at me and churn butter between their thighs. Does Yoda get the girls wet? Yuh-ha, from spitting all over them with his old man Jedi drool. Not what I had in mind. Give me Han. You can make it happen. You owe me this."

"The fuck I do!"

"That time your dog Bangles --"

"Biggles --"

"-- Biggles got hit by a drunk driver and he was all mashed up and at death's door and how I found him on the road on my way home from the liquor store and I drove him right to the vet hospital and I spent the night with him holding his little paw and willing him to live, Biggles, live, LIVE FOR SONDRA! and in the morning you found us and you were so happy and grateful..."

"That never happened!"

"But if it did, you'd owe me."

So, yeah. You've got ten pages. During that time, Readers want to hate you. Their Reader Spidey senses are quivering with sensitivity, ready to pick up on every little mistake. They want to find some reason to dial back their attention and breeze through your script in half the time because they've already decided you are a PASS. Maybe in a quarter of the time if they decide early you are a PASS AND AVOID FOREVER.

Because if the Reader can't find a reason to hate you it means the Reader has to entertain the idea you might get him or her excited. In that wonderful Catch-22 Hollywood way, getting excited about a screenplay is simultaneously the Reader's worst nightmare and most cherished secret wish. If the Reader gets excited and gives your screenplay a CONSIDER, it opens all sorts of doors and possibilities -- one of which ends with the boss firing them for CONSIDER-ing what the boss believes should have been a PASS, so thank you, now-unemployed Reader, for wasting his time. But if the boss loves it too...

The Ten Page Torture Test is here to teach you how to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge past the common pitfalls all Readers look out for during those first ten pages.

CAVEATS

• For the purposes of posting here, script pages were reformatted via Celtx. Format will vary from the original screenplay.
• Any layout artifacts or imperfections are likely due to the reformatting process. Blame me before you blame the author.
• These are the first ten pages as laid out in the original screenplay.
• Important story elements are described in BLUE
• Perceived problems are highlighted in RED

OK, so Mark Atwater (our legendary 'Shortkill') agreed to let me dissect his script Diggers as my first Ten Page Torture Test (10PTT). Thanks, Mark, for being the guinea pig, the canary in the coal mine, the nameless Corporal who five minutes into the movie takes point and fifteen seconds later steps on a mine, screams IT'S A TRAP! and blasts into several million tiny chunks. (Not today, Mark. No, not today, good buddy.)

The format and approach for this 10PTT series will surely change over time, hopefully improving as we go. I'm happy for others to publish their own 10PTTs, but I ask that you retain the same format and approach as mine (whatever is currently in vogue; including the 10PTT graphic), to keep a consistent look and feel for these things.  Certainly offer your suggestions and criticisms in the comments below.

One thing I'm keeping firmly in mind, as should you when commenting, is: we're all here to LEARN. Each of us has our different experiences and opinions. Some of us have outrageously strong opinions (ORLY, pitchpatch? ORLY?). Some of us... well, sometimes some of us try to shove our opinions down other people's throats (stop staring at me!), much like a mother egret trying to cram icky lizard tail into the beaks of her beloved, squirming baby egrets. Sure, it's done with love and the intention of nurturing, but that's no consolation for the baby egrets out there who don't appreciate having lizard tail forcefully inserted into their esophagus. Heck, you might be a frog eyes kind of egret instead of lizard tails, and that's totally cool.  Enough with the lizard tails. I get it. I might not be into the whole frog-eyes thing, but I can respect that we differ on that.

Where I'm going with this is, by doing these 10PTT posts I'm not claiming to be the authority on what's right and wrong when it comes to storytelling and screenplay presentation. But I do know some things. And I know you know some things I don't know yet (some 'known unknowns'), things you'll show me and the wider screenplay community, things that'll help me grow as a writer.  So if I go off on a rant about such-and-such a technicality or some wacko story point, please don't be offended. Writers must develop thick skins to survive and flourish. (Thick like lizard skin, w00t!). I'll always try to justify my reactions, and I'm keen to hear about your reactions and why you reacted that way.

OK, so moving right along.

This is how I'm putting together these 10PTTs presently: As mentioned in the CAVEATS section, first I export the pdf to TXT then import it into Celtx. Next I fix up the formatting, remove page breaks, and get the content shipshape. Finally I drop that Celtx text into a new forum topic, bookend it in CODE tags to preserve layout, and start the analysis. NEW: For the 'grammar pass' I export the Celtx pages as PNGs, drop them into OpenOffice Draw, and mark up those pages with drawing tools and layers. Finally, I export the annotated pages back to PNG for embedding into the topic post.

With the formalities behind us and our bellies bulging with icky lizard tails, let's begin!

[TO BE CONTINUED...]

[Pitchpatch]

Alrighty.  First we'll do a grammar pass on our first ten pages from Diggers. Many of these edits are individual style choices and opinions will vary between authors. Some of these edits are more strongly justified and are intended to conform to the ABCs of good writing: be concise, be clear, and use strong, active language, etc.

PAGE ONE NOTES:

• 'grows brighter' > 'brightens'
  
  Here we have an example of substituting two words with one. This has two results: 1) less words -- one aspect of the art of screenwriting is saying more with less; 2) punchier sentences -- shorter sentences with rich, active verbs makes for smoother reading.

• Arguable, but perhaps an example of too much detail. We want to use broad strokes and avoid repetition -- we've already mentioned 'the atmosphere' in the previous scene.

• 'fall' > 'tumble'
  
  'Fall' is quite a passive word, and it appears a little too often on this first page for my liking.

• There are two main thoughts in this sentence, and I feel it's too crammed and unwieldy as it stands. I can visualise the shot following the pebbles as they cascade from the grates onto the umbrellas of the citizens below, but I think it reads better split into two shorter sentences.

• "A gloved hand reaches out and catches the pebble."
  
  The two elements in this shot are the gloved hand and the pebble. 'Reaches out' is implicit and slows down what I envisage as a quick gesture (more like a snatch, e.g. "A gloved hand snatches the pebble").

The bulk of my suggested edits are there to reclaim space, tighten up verbiage, and accelerate the narrative. We'll see how we go with the remaining pages, but at this rate it's conceivable that Diggers' 84-page run length could be trimmed by ten pages overall. That space could be put back in by increasing whitespace and going more vertical -- or fleshing out the story.

[Pitchpatch]

Page 2 grammar pass...

PAGE TWO NOTES:

• 1 - "fastens a rectangular object"
  
  The audience will quickly deduce it's some kind of explosive, so we may as well call it that in the screenplay
  

• 2 - We've already stated the figure is hanging upside down, so no need to repeat here
  

• 3 - "Props open"
  
  This threw me a little. On first read I took it to mean 'props' as in propellers of some sort. That's probably my tendency to scan for Subject-Verb-Object in sentences. Omitting the subject pronoun ('the figure', 'he') can be disorienting when you write too many sentence fragments in a bunch
  

• 4 - "spies his head out" reads kind of clunky for me. Here all we need to know is that the figure has been spotted.
  

• 5 - "tattoos swimming freely across her body"
  
  Here I wasn't sure if the writer literally meant the tattoos were roaming free over her skin or if this was simply a nice way of describing regular tattoos. I hope the former, because that would look tres cool.
  

• 6 - "until she is positioned"
  
  This is the dreaded 'passive' style of writing that sucks colour and movement from a script. Avoid!
  

• 7 - "and looks up with radiant blue eyes"
  
  There's too much going on in this single sentence: moving, looking, smiling, washing. If it's important to note the blue eyes (and I suspect it is) then best to focus on the eyes in a sentence by themselves, or move it to a suggested shot, e.g.
  
  

  She slowly enters the spring and moves under the waterfall.
  
  CLOSE ON her radiant blue eyes. She smiles as the water washes over her.
  

• 8 - "Hidden in the tall grass"
  
  One of the tenets of good writing is to orient the reader in space and time as soon as possible. What this means is, don't leave the reader grasping for context until the end of a sentence. Put the spatial and chronological cues right up front so the reader can properly construct the idea. So...
  
  

  "He stepped out of the black Mercedes after it pulled to the curb at the rear of the Parliament building. His thick report hit the Minister's desk moments later."
  
  reads better as...
  
  "Behind the Parliament building, the black Mercedes pulled to the curb and he stepped out. Moments later his thick report hit the Minister's desk."
  

• 9 - "a static field hits the waterfall"
  
  If you stop reading right there, what does this mean? At this point we don't yet know the waterfall is an electronic construct. The 'static field' appears to be some kind of shockwave from the explosion. Only be reading further do we understand the 'static field' is electrical static/noise disrupting the projection. Might as well make it clear right away.

[Pitchpatch]

Page Three grammar pass...

PAGE NOTES:

• 1 - "(stands up)"
  
  Hooboy, parentheticals. One of the many minutiae screenwriters trade blows over.  I have a strong opinion on them: use parentheticals to avoid ambiguity about who is being spoken to and use them to clear up ambiguity in how something is being said. Otherwise don't use them. e.g.
  
  

  Who is being spoken to...
  
  -----
  The squad sits at the mess hall table while Captain Moffit drills them on the plan.
  
                      MOFFIT
            You two head west and set up a sniper nest.
  
  [Which two?]
  -----
                      MOFFIT
                 (eyeing Smith and Wesson)
            You two head west and set up a sniper nest.
  [OR]
                      MOFFIT
                 (indicating Smith and Wesson)
            You two head west and set up a sniper nest.
  
  [OR moving the parenthetical to action...]
  
                      MOFFIT
            You two head west and set up a sniper nest.
  
  Smith and Wesson nod affirmatively.
  
  
  
  Abiguity in how something is said...
  
                      TIM
            I see.
  
  [Delivery entirely left to actor and context]
  -----
                      TIM
                 (seething quietly)
            I see.
  
  [Unambiguously angry delivery]
  -----
                      TIM
                 (unconvincingly)
            I see.
  
  [OR moving the parenthetical to action...]
  
                      TIM
            I see.
  
  But he doesn't really.

  
  So based on that criteria, my personal choice would be to move the 'he stands up' into action. You sacrifice a little extra whitespace, but worth it, IMO.  Nothing chokes up a page like rampant parentheticals.
  
  HOWEVER. I could also make the case that the action (stands up) and the dialogue ("I'm fine") are concurrent -- Buckner says it while standing up... so that seems like a perfect justification for Mark using this parenthetical here. (Hey, if you're not agonising over stuff like this then I have my doubts you are sufficiently neurotic/obsessive to make it in the biz!)
  

• 2 - Apologies. First thing that popped into my head.
  -----
  "She's crafty - she's gets around
  She's crafty - she's always down
  She's crafty - she's got a gripe
  She's crafty - and she's just my type!"
  -----
  It's a good line here in the script, though. Rich in hidden meaning. You can easily imagine Buckner's expression as he says it.
  

• 3 and 4 - "crates set stacked to the ceiling"
  This sentence felt like too much alliteration. Also, I'm not thrilled with the repetition of the word 'crate' in this and the next sentence. I switched 'trunks and crates' to 'crates and trunks' to try to break up the connection with 'crates' between the two. I would even toy with switching the sentences around so that we begin focused on the teddy bear's glass eyes staring out from a crate and then go wide to reveal we're in a room full of crates.
  

• 5 - OK, this is where I jump ahead to page analysis proper (not just grammar). We've got new characters introduced and little information about them to help us get a handle on who they are, physically and functionally. I know we're not talking about human characters here, but we still need some clues to help us form a picture in our minds. Job description is a start (Kurall the historian), but much more is needed here.
  

• 6 - "if only you knew what I knew"
  I'm guessing Newurk is talking about what he knows NOW, not what he KNEW BACK THEN. The line as it stands could be correct -- we just don't know yet because we don't know what Newurk is referring to. But I'll take a punt and assume it was meant as "If only you knew what I know."  Wow, I'm getting REALLY ridiculously petty on this page, am I not?  Not a hell of a lot to pick apart on this page, grammar related.
  

• 7 - "I retired from the game. Remember?"
  'from the game' feels superfluous to me. What's the game referred to? Is it a euphemism for a particular career? Is it referring to an actual game of some kind? We just don't know yet. Best to remove the ambiguity entirely. "I'm retired" is all we need to know.
  

• 8 - "Newurk takes a small box..."
  I flagged this one solely because 'takes' is one of the words that, for me, falls into the category of blank verbs. It just sits there on the page hoping you'll skip right over it and it can return to doing sweet bugger all. I substituted the slightly more sexy 'retrieves', but others would suffice too: 'removes', 'fetches', 'reveals' -- one less passive verb in your sentence can be enough to make it pop and get the reader's synapses firing just a tiny bit more than otherwise.
  

• 9 - We already talked about parentheticals at length in Note One. I would move this into description, e.g.
  
  

  Newurk retrieves a small box from his jacket and tosses it to Kurall, who turns it over in his hands.
  
                      KURALL
            Looks like a security tape.
  

  
  The only problem here is, I'm still not sure Kurall has hands!

[Pitchpatch]

Page Four grammar pass.

Solid work from Shortkill for this page. Not much for me to do. Rearrange the deck chairs a little for my own taste...

PAGE NOTES:

• 1 - "(to the shadows)"
  Perfect use of parentheticals.
  

• 2 - "baton-type object"
  We need it defined. That's the writer's job. If it's basically a baton, just use 'baton'. If it's some new device particular to this world then give it a name, briefly describe it, and from then on use the new name. I used 'sheath' simply to get rid of the 'object-type' reference.
  

• 3 - "(holds up the box)"
  OK, contentious, but here I would move it out into Action solely because the last line was focused on Newurk, so it's a new shot -- we're cutting to Kurall. But all in all, this parenthetical is a tiny bit of busywork and can easily stay where it is.

Folks, look at the muscle (active verbs) in this paragraph:

Newurk shoots a quick glance at the entrance and slides into
the shadows out of view. The bell on the door JINGLES and
Buckner rushes into the room.

Bam, bam, bam, bam. Powerful verbs chase you through the scene. It's like you've got sirloin steak stuffed down your trousers and someone lets a pack of rottweilers into the room. You MOVE!

Also, check out the parallel sentence construction: THIS and THAT. THIS and THAT. The symmetry nicely complements the action/reaction here.

Now, you wouldn't want to have ten paragraphs in a row flexing their muscles this visibly -- would be kinda exhausting for the reader. You need to drop back into passive style here and there to cool off and catch a breath and avoid a prolonged manic, hysterical pace.  But what a great way to kick the story along in bursts.

[Pitchpatch]

Page Five grammar pass... again, a very tidy page that pulls its weight:

PAGE NOTES:

• 1 - ' ... about three times bigger than ...'
  Vagueness is something we want to avoid in writing, be it a novel or a screenplay. It's the author's job to help the reader form a clear picture in their mind's eye. Does the above description indicate the object is between two and three times bigger, or is it between three and four times bigger?  It doesn't matter, you say? BOOM! Good, because if it doesn't matter then just say it's 'three times bigger'. But if it DOES matter then describe it with precision: "three inches high", "a foot and a half in length" -- that kind of thing.
  

• 2 - 'pays little attention to'
  Here's a good example where one active verb can gobble up a bunch of lazier words that mean the same thing. It saves some whitespace as well as energizing your narrative.
  

• 3 - 'Eric ducks below it'
  A minor stylistic thing, but 'ducks below' means the same as plain 'ducks' -- 'ducks' always mean dipping under. So we can trim the redundant 'below'.

So this page is nicely effective, IMO. I like the intercutting between the conversation and the arena action. And I love the imagery with the bug characters.

[Pitchpatch]

Page Six grammar pass...

PAGE NOTES:

• 1 - '(raises his multi eyebrows)'
  This parenthetical breaks over two lines, so we lose no whitespace moving it into Action. If it fit on one line then I'd be inclined to leave it, to keep the flow of dialogue intact. For me, moving it into Action emphasizes the gesture, too. As you'll see when I do my Cabin In The Woods 10PTT, parentheticals are an inexact science even for A-list writers. But I like to stick to a set of guidelines because it results in a consistent pattern of use, at least.
  

• 2 - 'swings around and thrashes about'
  'around' and 'about' are embellishments IMO, and they don't add enough value to justify their place. If anything, they soften the impact of the active verbs.
  

• 3 - 'on its throat'
  We mentioned throat one sentence back so the reader can easily fill in the blanks. Not necessary to repeat here, IMO.
  

• 4 - 'This area resembles a war zone'
  Another minor pet peeve of mine. Similar gripe as turned up in Page Five. For Page Five I said 'about three times bigger' is wishy washy. Be decisive! It's your job as a writer! Here we see 'resembles' and 'resembles' means 'similar to'. It lets air (and tension) out of the balloon. "It's a war zone" leaves no room for softening the image.
  

• 5 - 'down... down'
  The repetition felt a little clunky. We only need one 'down' in this sentence.
  

• 6 - I think 'firelight' is implied here, and need not be mentioned unless it's critical somehow.  For me, combining the two sentences into one forms a seamless flow of action, suggesting a single tracking/arm shot -- but of course the director will do whatever he or she pleases (and probably turn the simple sequence into 12 cuts and a triple-zoom-reverse to give it the 'Bourne' feel). As it stands, it suggests several shots (outside/inside) and that also is perfectly OK. This is an example of attempting to influence the director's shooting choices without using explicit shot descriptions. Again, if you're Joss Whedon (see upcoming CITW 10ptt) then you'll go ahead and put in 'we ARM to' and 'we REVERSE on'.

[Pitchpatch]

Page Seven grammar pass...

PAGE NOTES:

• 1 - 'pass large pieces of a mushroom around'
  One guideline for good writing is 'keep related words together.' When related words get separated from each other their effectiveness thins out in proportion to the distance between them.  When a related word gets excessively displaced from its rightful place, that's when confusion and ambiguity creep in.  Here, the word 'around' is drifting away dangerously from the herd. (I almost wrote 'drifting away from the herd dangerously' -- you see what I mean?)
  

• 2 - '(holds up a large mushroom) ... (breaks off a portion of the shand)'
  Well, by now you know my thoughts about parentheticals, and you'll know that I prefer to use them sparingly and rarely for busywork during dialogue. So here I'd shift these lines to Action. It's no crime to pepper you dialogue with parentheticals -- it would take me a minute or less to reach over to my cabinet right now and fetch for you a half dozen A-list screenplays that do it. But do keep an eye on how you use and overuse your parentheticals. Readers know when you're cheating for whitespace or staying in dialogue too long.
  

• unnumbered - 'without any need for ropes'
  Yeah, sorry. Forgot to number this one before exporting the pic. I replaced the whole bit with 'unassisted.' The mention of 'ropes' is, I think, a general reference, i.e. if it were humans you'd expect they'd need ropes to climb, but there aren't any. These creatures have agility and that's all they need. Explicitly mentioning ropes puts the picture of a rope in my head, and that's the opposite of what I'm supposed to be seeing. Also, compressing this word sequence into a single word reclaims a line of whitespace... May seem petty, but over a full screenplay these savings add up and can mean the difference between typing THE END halfway down Page 121 or bottom of Page 115. Readers much prefer to see a 11X page count to a 12X page count. It's a subliminal thing.

[Pitchpatch]

Page Eight grammar pass...

This week a combined one-two punch of flu and migraines has kept me away from these posts, but feeling good today so back into it. Huzzah!  Have at you!

PAGE NOTES:

• 1 - 'on a monitor screen'
  This is an example of helping your reader by giving your frames of reference (time and space; in this case, just the latter) early in the sentence instead of making them wait til the end of the sentence. When we place the time/space cues at the end, the reader has to mentally reshuffle the elements of the sentence to make sense of it. In the original sentence we start off thinking Kurall is watching a figure RIGHT NOW. It's only at the end of the sentence we realise it's happening on the monitor. Ambiguity is never a good thing for a reader. When evaluating your sentences, a good exercise is to stop at certain points and ask, Does the sentence make sense so far? Does it rely on a sentence part that follows?  If that's the case, see if you can shift that part to the front of the sentence. Another option here is to rewrite the original sentence like this: "Kurall watches a monitor screen where a figure darts through the air bypassing laser security sensors."
  

• 2 - 'A gurgling sound gyrates a big aquarium tank'
  This is a terrific sentence. At first I wasn't sure it's valid to have a SOUND (subject) GYRATE (verb) a TANK (object). After a quick rethink I concluded yeah, nothing wrong with that. Sounds act upon objects all the time. "The alarm bell shredded his eardrums."  "Her scream pierced the night."  I think it's the combination of GURGLING and GYRATING I've never heard before. But I like it! The sentence packs a wallop by giving you a) a strong verb in GYRATES, and b) a vivid sound description in GURGLING.
  

• 3 - 'at the front of the tank'
  We can rely on context and leading to eliminate some of the spatial cues repeated in this paragraph. In the revision we get the GURGLING tank behind him, we get Kurall APPROACHING the tank... so at this point we know he's standing in front of the tank. We don't need to point it out again. He's looking at the front of the tank and so are we. The first thing we see is the murky green water, so that's why I've moved it to the head of the sentence.

[Pitchpatch]

Page Nine grammar pass...

Streaking for the finish line!

PAGE NOTES:

Just the one here, and I've pointed this out on several pages now: be specific in your descriptions. 'Stereo-looking unit' is too bland. We need to give the Reader something to underpin his or her mental image.

Wait, I've got another I didn't annotate -- it's right below Note One: '(comes through the amplifier)'.  I've reduced this parenthetical to '(filtered)' which is a standard shorthand for indicating any electronically filtered audio. Or you could move the '(Filtered)' up to the name slug, like a (V.O.) or (O.S.).

GRAMMAR NOTES OVERALL:

With the pages so far, we've stripped back the prose and made it lean and hungry. There's a risk it's too efficient and spartan. We don't want to march along to a constant beat of Subject-Verb-Object. That would be as monotonous as never varying sentence length. So I would revise the pages and reintroduce some passive sentences to loosen up the narrative. Only here and there, for contrast.

[Pitchpatch]

ZOMFG, we're almost done with the grammar pass. Quoting Michael Scott: "And we're off like a herd of turtles!"

Page Ten grammar pass...


PAGE NOTES:

• 1 - 'Kurall gets up and bolts out of the room.'
  Except no, he doesn't. Otherwise Buckner is about to speak to dead air. Also, 'crusty looking magazine' is exactly the same as 'crusty magazine'. Don't be timid when describing things. If it looks and quacks like a duck then call it a duck instead of calling it a duck-like thing. "Tom's fist is like a wrecking ball as it pounds into Tony's jaw." Nope, use "Tom's fist is a wrecking ball slamming into Tony's jaw." It's not LIKE one, it IS one. WHAM! Not "a WHAM-like sound."  Another version: "Tom's wrecking-ball fist connects with Tony's jaw." That sort of thing. I like the second version because the soft verb 'connects' leaves all the visual power pent up in the image of the 'wrecking ball' fist. Wrecking balls hit at one speed only: MUTHERFUCKIN' HARD! So a strong verb here can be considered redundant.
  

• 2 - Colonel Otor is PART of the security team. He's right there with them, so we can omit naming him separately here. This saves space and reduces the repetition of his name in the next sentence.
  

• 3 - We had a couple lines earlier describing the team huddled behind rocky cover, so no need to repeat something we already established.

WHAT ARE THE REPEATING THEMES OF THIS GRAMMAR PASS?

Use strong active verbs. Be concise: don't say in five words what you can say in three. You are the Reader's eyes and ears so be precise and specific in your description.


WHAT NEXT?

So we're done with the grammar pass. Those are the changes I'd play with to punch up the words on the page. I'd say half the changes are valid and required based on the tenets of 'good' writing. The other half are more personal style choice and don't matter so much.  My next (final?) post in this topic will look at what the first ten pages achieves in setting up the story elements, moving the story forward, and engaging the Reader/audience.