How do you keep your story riveting from beginning to end? Like a good driver who knows when to put the pedal to the metal and when to slow down around the curves, a good writer is aware of a story's pace. Every page of your script better be moving the story forward or it'll translate into one big yawn by the time it gets to the big screen.
One of the biggest surprises I experienced while working on the initial rough cut of my film, WATERCOLORS
was how slowly the pace was moving. I had two actors in a bedroom just talking for a large chunk of the first act. I was fortunate enough to have worked with a great editor, who chopped off large chunks of dialog while still managing to keep the mood of the scene in tact. An extra two or three weeks working on the script with particular attention to pacing may have eliminated costly days of shooting. Of course, hindsight is 20/20. But, I learned a valuable lesson about editing. It's easier to do it on the page than in front of an expensive editing bay running the latest software, at a hefty hourly rate. It's easier to crumble up a page and throw it in the garbage and start over than to rehearse a scene with actors, spend hours shooting it and start putting it together in the editing suite only to realize it's over written, slow and boring.
A screenplay is not prose fiction. You can't delve into a character's inner thoughts. That's the realm of the novel. A screenplay is not an endless string of monologues. Words thrive in the realm of the play.
There's a limited amount of time in a screenplay to get across a lot of information. Keep in mind that a screenplay is merely a blueprint for actors and a production team to turn into a film. Every word has to belong there. Anything that can be cut will and should be cut during the process of making the film. Start by being ruthless during the writing process. Its an exercise in extreme minimalism.
One thing I advise writers to do is to start as late in the scene as possible. If the murderer is about to kill his next victim, let's start with the action, the killer closing in with a machete! Let's not start with what the victim had for breakfast or how motivated a saleswoman she was, or what a great single mother she was. If those qualities are pertinent to the story, they'll emerge. Start with a bang. Perhaps not a huge bang as your opening sequence but in a sense each scene in your screenplay has its own beginning, middle and end. Start every scene with an intriguing, rich opening of its own. Weave events together so you have a tapestry of rising action, rising stakes, rising tension.
It's said that each page is approximately one minute of screen time. Make every moment in your script count. Make sure if it's in there, it helps push your story forward.
This week's suggested website: The New Yorker Magazine (www.newyorker.com) has been in print since 1925. It's my personal favorite. Some of the best writers of the today publish fiction and essays here. Well worth the price of a subscription.
This week's writing prompt: Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time. Take a story you're currently working on and examine the opening scene. Can you think of anything in your existing sequence that can be cut? Is there anything slowing down your opening? Spend five minutes reviewing your work for pacing.
