NOTES:19. Less is more
It's common to omit the INT/EXT & NIGHT/DAY to indicate no change in general location. Think of it as sub-locations. The writer established we're INT Leisure World Retirment Home. We don't need those full slugs blocking our way at regular intervals like hastily toppled filing cabinets during a foot chase. Use simple, shortened slugs until we EXT or CUT TO another location.
I'll say this again: don't erect walls between scenes; install doors, and oil the hinges if necessary. Better yet, install those beaded curtains that tickle your body as you squeeze through and make that pleasant clattering sound like a bag of marbles hitting the floor and scattering. Or install those batwing western saloon doors that spring back and forth creakily after you spur-jangle your way into that bar full of reprobates and wanted posters. Heck, forget doors. Just knock a sizable hole in the wall and shove the reader through.
Smooth scene transitions, baby. Make 'em silky smooth.
20. Dance for your supper
I'm not thrilled with this tiny scene. How do we, the movie audience, know this is "Stacy"? By naming her is the author tagging Stacy as an important character? If Stacy is an important character shouldn't we see her "in character res"? I bastardized that saying, but my version should totally be a thing because you understand exactly what I mean: seconds after seeing Stacy and studying her we should have some idea of the kind of person she is. If Stacy is nothing more than an extra then why name her? Let's read on and discover the answer...
21. Shocker: eating in the dining room
"Residents eat." That's the meat in the sentence. Dining room, residents, eating. A two-word slug followed by a two-word sentence works the same as the longer original sentence. But are we at breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? All are possible because we've been told only that time of day is DAY. We should pick a meal time. Let's go for lunch.
-----
DINING ROOM
Residents eat lunch, but not the fine cuisine from the TV ad. These are factory meals served on compartmentalized trays. Like in prison.
ANNE, mid 20s, attractive but intense, sits with resident TOM. Tom's hands flutter restlessly. He seems not to notice. Parkinson's Disease? No. These aren't tremors or spasms. These are gestures, rehearsed and eloquent. These are the hands of a magician, now retired. Holding an invisible wand. A pretend top hat. An imaginary rabbit. Forty years of stage work grooved deep in his brain -- and stuck on repeat.
-----
Took a long stroll there, but I'm back now. Here's what happened along the way: I took a 19-word paragraph and I stuffed it like a turkey until it fattened to 89 words -- four times as long. Oops. I indulged myself to demonstrate what storytelling sentences look like. Storytelling sentences work two jobs. Day job: describe to the reader the plain facts and keep the story moving forward. Night job: make the reader feel something about these characters and what's happening to them.
I don't know yet if Anne and Tom are main characters, so I can't say if one or the other deserves a proper character intro. If they do, we need more than plain facts. We need to be intrigued by these characters right from the meet-cute. Character introductions should create questions for us. Why dress like that? Why say that? Why do that? Nothing is what it is without cause.
So far in this screenplay we've been given no character intros. Cathy, Rob, Stacy, Anne, Tom -- all introduced with no description, no traits, no CHARACTER. Some get an implicit or explicit age tag, and that's all. We understand that any person labeled as "resident" will be elderly, so we don't need an explicit age indicator. What we do need is some small understanding about these characters. Something on which to hang our expectations. We want clues early about how this character and that one might fit into the story.
I did a bit of that in my revision above: "attractive but intense." One extra word to offset "attractive" and create some tension. How do we get "intense" from her? She doesn't speak in this brief shot so all we have is her body language, her posture, how she sits, how she's dressed. Give an actor "attractive but intense" and soon you'll learn exactly how a performer conveys those two qualities without needing to say a word.
Same goes for my fluffing of "male resident TOM." I overcooked it, but you gotta admit Tom's a lot more interesting in my intro.
Movies are about characters and relationships and how those relationships come together and break apart and come together between FADE IN and THE END; about how those relationships CHANGE. While those relationships churn, lives are sacrificed and saved. Perhaps entire galaxies prosper or perish. And still, none of that is half as important as the relationships between your characters.
Did I make my case for character intros? I hope so. I fight savagely and often to convince you to trim words and reduce page count. But not here. Character intros are exempt. Save words elsewhere and spend that coin during character intros. First impressions count.
22. Silky smooth
INT. LOUNGE - LEISURE WORLD
...
HALLWAY
...
DINING ROOM
...
EXT. PARKING LOT
...
See how that works? The EXT signals we're outside now. No time of day in the slug signals we're CONTINUOUS. We omitted a bunch of unnecessary (for a spec) screenplay scene scaffolding and we gained readability and whitespace.
23. Let it be
The author instinctively knows how this bit will play out: in a single traveling shot. We should let the description be what it wants to be. Don't fight it. Unleash it.
-----
EXT. PARKING LOT
ELECTRICAL CABLES
run out the back of a rusty Aurora Cable 10 truck, across the LAWN, through an open BASEMENT WINDOW to a --
STUDIO MONITOR
And there they are: our boys, WAYNE CAMPBELL and GARTH ALGAR. We're just in time for --
WAYNE AND GARTH
(on monitor, singing)
Wayne's World! Wayne's World! Party Time. Excellent!
Some things never change. Some things do. Our boys are 84 years old. Wayne still keeps his long black mullet despite a monk-like bald spot. Garth's unruly mane is now silver-grey and he wears thick framed glasses. Both have on their familiar ripped jeans and t-shirts.
...
-----
24.
We know they're elderly. Give us something else. Describe that close-up the way an audience sees it. Make us feel the horror. Garth and Wayne are old, man. LOOK AT THEM. Exactly when did the universe turn so cruel?
[Uh oh. I've put 3,000 words on the dial and we're only at page 3. Note to self: git along, lil doggy.]