Hello, everyone.  As you all know, I try and provide information that you don’t normally get in your screenwriting classes, screenwriting workshops and screenwriting courses.

Now that the holiday season is upon us, this is the perfect opportunity to make some New Years resolutions and one of them should be to push your writing to a whole new level of expertise.

If you live in Los Angeles, please consider my professional screenwriting workshops.  I take off $100 for anyone who participates in this group.  For more information about my classes, call or email me at (323) 912-9195/ gbenest@pacbell.net

Come visit my website at:

https://www.glennbenest.com/screenwriting-workshops-classes

Now for something fun and instructive:  the grabber for “This IS 40,” by Judd Apatow

INT. MASTER BATHROOM – DAY

PETE (39) and DEBBIE (39) are having fantastic sex in the shower.  Debbie moans loudly.  Pete is strong and sure of himself.  In total control.

DEBBIE

Oh Pete! Oh my god. This is crazy!

PETE

Oh my god. So incredible. Want to know a secret? I took Viagra.

DEBBIE

What?

PETE

I took a Viagra. Those things totally work. This is awesome. Why don’t I use this every day?

DEBBIE

What? What did you do? Wait. Stop.

Debbie gets out of the shower. Pete follows.

PETE

What’s the matter?

DEBBIE

You just took a Viagra to have sex with me?

PETE

I thought it would make it better. It was better. It takes some of the pressure off.

DEBBIE

Because you can’t get hard without a Viagra? Is it because you don’t think I’m sexy?

PETE

I thought you’d think it was fun for me to supersize it for once.

DEBBIE

That is the worst birthday present you could ever give someone.

PETE

It was just trying to go turbo for your birthday. My hard-ons are still in analog.  This shit’s digital.

DEBBIE

I don’t want a turbo penis. I like your medium soft one.

PETE

Look, I can get it up. Just not that far up.

DEBBIE

Where did you get this?

PETE

I got it from Barry.

DEBBIE

What? You got it from Barry?

PETE

Why do you care? This is my dick we’re talking about, not yours.

DEBBIE

We are young people. We don’t need medication to have sex.

PETE

I only took it because it’s your birthday. I thought you’d like it. Happy fucking fortieth birthday.

DEBBIE

I am not forty! And I don’t want to have a husband who has to take Viagra to get a hard-on.

PETE

I don’t have to take it every time, just once in awhile…

DEBBIE

Fuck forty! Forty can suck my dick!

TITLE UP – THIS IS 40

As you all well know, Judd Apatow when he’s on his game can not only make us laugh but make us feel.  (“This Is 40” is sequel to “Knocked Up”)  This scene is something that actually happened to one of my friends (I won’t tell you who) but I can attest it is real and would make a certain kind of spouse quite unhappy.  It actually might make another sort of spouse quite overjoyed!  But in any case, it sets up what the rest of the film is all about in a funny but poignant way.

We’ll look at more grabbers from recent films in the near future.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone.  Now that the holiday season is upon us, this is the perfect opportunity to make some New Years resolutions and one of them should be to push your screenwriting to a whole new level of expertise.

If you live in Los Angeles, please consider my professional screenwriting workshops.  I take off $100 for anyone who participates in this group.  For more information about my screenwriting classes and screenwriting courses, please visit:

https://www.glennbenest.com/screenwriting-workshops-classes

Okay, let’s continue our ongoing discussion now. We left off talking about great moments in films, how to milk those moments so the reader can feel/hear/smell/experience those moments as deeply as possible.

The following is an aspect of those small moments that writers oftentimes don’t take advantage of. Those are private moments.

What do I mean by private moments? Actors who study method acting oftentimes will be asked to show private moments of the characters they’re playing.

These are moments that we experience practically everyday of our lives. We look into the mirror and either are pleased to see what’s reflected back at us or more likely can’t believe how much we’ve aged (that’s a self confession I’m afraid).

We lie back in bed and think about something, we toss and turn in the night because something is really eating away at us, we look out the window at the rain, we play a sad or lighthearted song on our guitar, we hold our dog and tell him how much we love him or ask him why our girlfriend isn’t calling us back.

There are a million moments like this and they oftentimes show a unique insight into who we are how we’re truly feeling.

I love to see private moments in films because they oftentimes reveal the true heart of what someone is experiencing, they’re oftentimes visual and/or poetic, and they can oftentimes play with the pacing of the story to give it more unusual rhythms.

Think about your own private moments, what they reveal about you, what private moments you can reveal about your characters and how those moments could reveal a greater depth about who that character is or even wants to be.

There’s a great moment in Must Love Dogs where Diane Lane is a single woman in her late 30’s, early 40’s who eats standing up in her kitchen – a great private moment which shows how single she really is – she has no one to eat with – and food has just become something she ingests, not something she shares with anyone. By the end of the movie, this will all change.

I would love to hear on our Board some of the moments you can come up with or those you might find to enrich your stories.

Until next week then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone.  As you know, I’m constantly looking for subjects that wouldn’t normally be covered in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting workshop or even the average screenwriting class you get in school.

I would like to continue our discussion of the thematic thread we’ve been exploring – Moments.

There are many kinds of moments in a screenplay. There are the big moments I wrote about earlier. As we write, we go from one great emotional moment to the next.

Think of the moment when Woody Allen and Diane Keaton try to boil lobsters in “Annie Hall,” the moment when Billy Crystal desperately goes looking for Meg Ryan at the end of “When Harry Met Sally,” or the famous diner scene when she fakes an orgasm and a nearby customer says: “I’ll have whatever she’s having.”

These are great big moments in films that literally make a film memorable. William Goldman says if you have 5 or 6 great moments like these in a film you in effect have a great film. Think of the scene in “Coming Home,” by Waldo Salt when Jon Voigt first meets Jane Fonda.

She’s a volunteer at the V.A. hospital when she literally bumps into him. He’s a Vietnam Vet and she knocks over the bag he has to collect his urine and pee goes spilling everywhere. He’s incredibly embarrassed and humiliated and she clumsily tries to deal with it, shocked and embarrassed as well. It’s awkward, poignant and a great set-up for what will be a love story between a conservative married woman and a radical paraplegic.

I’ve mentioned before what Waldo Salt said about screenwriting. It’s not the dialogue that’s hard, it’s finding the visual image that the scene is about. This is what takes time. Finding the right picture that says everything. You cannot get a better picture than this to show how different their worlds are and how far they will have to come to understand and finally love one another.

Okay, well and good. Now let’s look at other kinds of moments. The first is the small moment that happens within a scene that makes a reader feel what you’re trying to convey between characters.

As a reader, I want to feel every emotional moment you’re trying to communicate. How do you get me to feel those moments? A great misunderstanding that many screenwriters have is that they’ve been told you can only write what we see – but that is not true. You can also write what characters are feeling, because this can be conveyed by the actors.

Let me give you 2 examples from a current screenplay I’m working on with a writer I’m doing a private consultation with:

A man bends over, intoxicated by a woman nearby. The screenwriter writes in the narrative:

“The look on his face: God, she smells good. She smiles sweetly, purrs in his ear:

MARYANNA

Can I call her? Pleeeeeese…”

This is a small moment that allows us to experience that sexual intoxication the character is feeling. The screenwriter is using the sense of smell to convey what’s happening which we cannot literally see on the screen, but an actor can play this moment so it’s completely legitimate, even essential, that you convey it to us.

Here’s another moment:

The underworld Boss of a criminal gang is being kidnapped by our hero. The Boss’s First-In-Command shows up to supposedly save him.

MALIK

Victor. Thank God you’re here. Don’t

let him take me.

VICTOR

No sweat, Mr. Malik. I’ll take care of it.

“Victor levels the shotgun. A look of realization on Malik’s face: I’m a fucking dead man.

The shotgun blast hits Malik in the chest.”

Here the writer conveys the horror and shock of the boss who realizes his own man is going to use this opportunity to kill him.

In both these instances, we’re going beyond what the actual visual is to how the characters are feeling, what’s in their heads, what they are smelling, what is going on behind their eyes, etc.

The more we can get inside these characters the more the reader will feel the moment. Each small moment. I want to experience what the characters are feeling, as deeply as possible.

Until next week – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone.  As you know, I’m always trying to provide information that you don’t normally get in screenwriting workshops, screenwriting classes and screenwriting courses.  This post should be called MOMENTS (big and small).  It’s not just the big moments I’m directing your attention to but the small ones as well.

The big moments are those we’ve been discussing.  Those are really what movies are about.  Let’s take the moment in “KNOCKED UP,” by Judd Apatow when Alison is quite pregnant and she and Ben are trying to have sex. Ben is on top.

ALISON

Come on, harder.

BEN

I can’t.

ALISON

Why?  Just do it deeper.

BEN

I can’t.

ALISON

Why?

BEN

I’ll poke the baby if I go deeper.

ALISON

Just do it.

BEN

Don’t yell at me.

ALISON

The doctor and Debbie said it’s fine. Come on!

Ben stops.

BEN

I’m sorry, can we change positions? I’m

going to crush the baby.

ALISON

That’s ridiculous!

BEN

No, it’s not. It has no shell.

ALISON

Millions of people have sex when they’re

pregnant! It just works!

BEN

I weigh over 200 pounds.

ALISON

Just get over it.

BEN

I can’t do it. Can you just get on top.

All I can see is our baby, poked in the face

by my penis.

ALISON

Trust me, you’re not even close. Okay, fine.

And the scene continues with a great deal more hilarity as well as vulnerability.

This is a moment.  It’s built on a very visual image, quite funny and yet poignant, not a little shocking in some ways, but something very relatable to any couple where the woman is pregnant and they’re having sex.

Here, it serves many purposes.  It’s a funny situation and serves the comedy, but it also serves the character development, as it shows Ben is becoming more and more responsible and caring about this child that’s about to come into the world.

And it serves to show how emotionally vulnerable Alison is becoming because of the loss of control she’s feeling about her body, how she’s feeling ugly and undesireable.

This is what every good moment should do.  It should play visually as well as emotionally.

The dialogue is absolutely great but the dialogue really supports the visuals, not the other way around.

Waldo Salt, who I often mention, as he is a great screenwriting hero to me, said that the hard part of writing screenplays is finding what the scene is about visually.

That is what takes time.  Not writing the dialogue.  Once you know what the scene is about visually, then it’s easy to write the dialogue.  What’s really hard and time consuming, is putting yourself in the scene emotionally, and finding out what the scene is about visually.

Some scenes in a movie are in fact built on the dialogue, but they should be scenes with great conflict, where characters are in the midst of turmoil and they talk about what they’re going through.

But that is not the norm.  We are writing screenplays because we want to paint pictures, not write dialogue.  Those pictures are what make great movies.

These are big moments.  Next week, we will talk about small moments in a film.

Keep contributing to our board…

I really appreciate when communication comes back as well as goes out.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone. As you know, I try and offer insights that you don’t normally get in a screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop.  Please let me know other subjects you’d like me to discuss.

I’m very happy to see that more and more of you are sharing your thoughts and insights on our site.  And thanks to everyone who came to my webinar on Halloween:  Writing A Great Horror Film, it was a great success.

Also, you can look for writing partners, contribute knowledge about screenwriting contests or awards, etc. I look forward to more and more information that we can offer one another.

Many of you have inquired about my private screenwriting workshops here in Los Angeles or in the private consultations that I do. Please contact me directly about these services as well – gbenest@pacbell.net

Now, let’s continue on with our discussion of how we should be thinking about screenwriting: going from one rich moment to the next. As William Goldman so aptly wrote, if you have 5 or 6 great moments in a screenplay, you have in essence a great movie in the making.

I’d like to share a recent movie going experience I just had on DVD: “The Other Boleyn Girl,” a wonderful movie I just saw with Natalie Portman. It’s a great example of taut visual writing as it leads us moment by rich moment through the relationship of Ann and Mary Boleyn and their love affairs with King Henry.

If you watch this movie closely, you will see how spare the dialogue is, it serves mainly to bolster the great pictures that are drawn by the screenwriter. It goes from one powerful and visual moment to the next —

Henry’s Spanish queen loses another child and Henry still has no male heir; Mary and Ann’s uncle tells their father this is an opportunity for them to snare the King’s roving eye with the beautiful Ann (as this will benefit the Boleyn family greatly).

With great fanfare the king appears with his entourage and they go on a hunt; Ann leads the King down a ravine and he’s hurt; which also injures the king’s pride, so Mary appears to take care of him and he falls for Mary, even though she’s already married…

It’s all very rich with visuals, with a great sense of historical accuracy of what life was actually like at that time. The action does not depend on the dialogue, the dialogue is only there really to service the visual moments. We are seeing a movie – not hearing dialogue.

The screenwriter finds the most visual and compelling moments to tell the story, for example, how the entire society depended on male children being born, the agony of miscarriages, the pomp and circumstance of court, the complete tyranny of the king, his lascivious desires and how pleasing or displeasing him could mean your survival…

So telling the story was achieved so successfully by finding one moment after the next to bring to life this time, this rich relationship between sisters and how England changed forever from a Catholic country to the Church of England, all because of the sexual desires of a despotic king.

Your scenes should not normally depend on the dialogue but on finding these moments.

We will talk a great deal more about this in the weeks to come. Once again – thanks for participating and please let’s do more and more of this – as you share movies with us or great screenplays you’ve read.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone.  I’ve been talking lately about great Moments in films and why they’re so important.  This subject is barely covered by most screenwriting workshops, screenwriting courses or screenwriting classes.  Most of these groups have too many other subjects to cover to delve into these more specific areas.  That’s why I developed this blog.

In the following example, grandparents of a young boy begin to realize their daughter is giving her son psychiatric drugs so she can receive money from the government.  It’s really an horrendous, evil act as the child is perfectly fine, yet these drugs will have extremely harmful effects on him.

This scene occurs when the grandparents just begin to figure out what’s happening:

INT. HARTS’ HOME

Bill joins Gloria. Gloria watches Noah and notices something’s not right with him. She motions to Bill to pay attention.

GLORIA

(to Noah)

So how are you doing?

Noah

OK.

GLORIA

Are you hungry?

NOAH

Yes, Mimi.

GLORIA

Are you tired?

NOAH

Yeah.

BILL

OK. First food and then sleep. OK?

NOAH

Can I sleep with you?

BILL

Yes, Noah. You’ll sleep with us tonight.

Noah seems listless. They all walk to the kitchen.  Noah’s tattered shoes remain on the carpet.

INT. HARTS HOME – BEDROOM – NIGHT

It’s dark. Noah is sleeping between Bill and Gloria, with his arm around Bill’s neck. The dog is snuggled at Noah’s feet. Noah is quite restless. Gloria gets up and stands over him, looking at him. Bill gets up and they both stand by Noah, looking at him for a long time. Noah quiets down without waking up as though he’s feeling his grandparents’ presence.

BILL

Something’s not right with him.

GLORIA

Yeah. His mother probably drove him looney.

He should be back to his old self now that we get to have him everyday.

As you can see, what could be a great moment is vague and uninspiring.  It just lays there on the page.  The writer has not really figured out what THE MOMENT is.  For example, what if the child begins to itch so badly from the medication, he keeps scratching his leg.  He won’t stop.  He keeps scratching until his leg starts to bleed.  Tears stream down his face.  The grandparents don’t know what to do.

This could be quite horrifying to the grandparents — it’s visual, it’s a great moment that would take 1/4 the time to communicate but would express so much more in a much more compelling manner.

Find the moment the scene is about and focus in on that moment.  It’s something visual, something that expresses in images much more than you could ever express in dialogue.  Cut away all the extraneous stuff and give us the moment, then the next great moment, then the next and you’ll have a great screenplay.  Get off all the boring stuff in between.

We will continue this exploration for the next few weeks.  Please contribute on our site any movie you can think of that has great moments.  I would love to hear your feedback on this and get a whole list of these moments.  And for those of you want to see previous posts go to FILES on the top right of our page and see all previous posts.

Until then – KEEP WRITING.  I’ll be joining you!

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Hello, everyone. As always I’m attempting to provide information you wouldn’t normally get in a screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop.  I hope I’m succeeding.

I want to move away now from the mechanics of delivering a great read as frankly I’m getting bored with the whole subject.  We will certainly return to this area in the future as I am still getting material in my classes and in my private consultations that still don’t deliver on this incredibly important aspect of screenwriting.  But for now – we will concern ourselves with a matter of even greater consequence.

Moments.  What do I mean by moments?  In one of the best screenwriting books ever written — “Adventures in the Screen Trade,” by William Goldman (Misery, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and many others) he writes that if you have 5 or 6 great moments in a screenplay, you’ve got the makings of a great movie.

Let’s think about that.  Marathon Man, one of Goldman’s great screenplays – Olivier plays a notorious Nazi doctor named Zell (who did gruesome experiments on Jews in the concentration camps).  He’s kidnapped Dustin Hoffman because he thinks he knows important information about his stash of diamonds.  He picks up his dentistry equipment, about to torture him and keeps repeating:  “Is it safe?”  “Is it safe?”  I’m sure if you’ve seen the movie you’ll never forget that moment.

It goes on as the hero squirms in a chair, has no idea what Zell is talking about and finally blurts out – “Yes, it’s safe.” Then when Zell keeps asking, he says “No, it’s not safe.”  Then Zell goes to work on his teeth.

Or the moment when Zell has to go to the diamond district to find out what diamonds are worth now and it’s full of Jews.  One old Jewish woman recognizes him and starts yelling from across the street – “That’s Zell.  Ohmygod, somebody help.  Zell!  It’s Zell!”  Other Jews on the street look up and before long Zell is on the run.

That’s what I mean by moments.  They are usually short sequences in movies, scenes or parts of scenes where something really comes out at you – chilling, compelling, or hilarious but always visual moments that are so good they become timeless.

I read many scripts where a scene just lays there on the page inertly because the writer hasn’t found THE MOMENT the scene is about.

I’ll give you more examples in the weeks to come about moments that work and some that don’t.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone.  These discussions are designed to add to the basic knowledge you get in your typical screenwriting course, screenwriting class or screenwriting workshop.

Here is another area where I find screenwriters need to focus.  Rising Dramatic action: be aware what is the dramatic action that is causing the reader to keep turning pages.

If you kill off one bad guy, please bring in another bad guy right away, hopefully somebody even worse.  If one dramatic dilemma or problem is solved, then raise another one immediately.   Always be aware of what is causing the reader to keep turning pages.

If nothing is compelling me to keep turning pages (in other words – having to know what is going to happen next) – your script is dead in the water.

Is Dustin Hoffman going to get the daughter of the woman he’s screwing in the Graduate? Or is Dustin Hoffman going to outrun the killers after he escaped from Zell in Marathon Man? Or are the partygoers in Cloverfield going to escape the monster when they get back to get their friends?

We can never stop the reader from wanting to know the answer to these big dramatic questions.   Once you’ve blown up the balloon with air (tension) never let the air back out of the balloon.  Or, once you’ve got the audience by the throat – never let go.  Instead, keep blowing more air into the balloon until it has to pop – but somehow it doesn’t until the very climax of the story.

We have one or more issues I’d like to raise about the read and how crucial this is to getting your script sold or recommended.  We will do this in the next few weeks, then move on to new territory.

These discussions are all about making a good script great, not the rudimentary lessons someone would hear about in a beginning screenwriting course or screenwriting class.  Maybe later on, we will revisit structure and those primary subjects that are the root of every great screenplay, but for now, I’m more interested in discussing more advanced topics – like pumping up dialogue, scene construction and enriching a scene, layers of character, what really makes a screenplay work, etc.

Until then — KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone.  We’ve communicated at some length about what makes a great read and things to avoid in your narrative.  As you know, I attempt to provide information that you won’t normally get in screenwriting courses, screenwriting classes, and screenwriting workshops.

One issue I realize we haven’t addressed is giving your protagonists a great entrance.  Remember, the reason your film is getting made is because a star has committed to your film.  So naturally the star wants all the great scenes and all the great dialogue.  There’s business reasons for pleasing that star but it also makes sense on an artistic level as well.

For more on this subject read:  Adventures in the Screen Trade, by William Goldman.  This is one of the best books written for screenwriters, because it gives invaluable insights into the business as well as the artistic side of writing screenplays, and there’s no greater screenwriter than Goldman (Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Misery, etc).

As Goldman points out, your protagonist should be the most interesting character in your film.  That’s not always easy to do as your star also must carry the film plotwise.  Sometimes a secondary character who doesn’t have this burden can be the one who comes up with great lines and ends up stealing the show, like the Tom Cruise character in Tropic Thunder.  In fact, I heard at one point the studio was trying to make a film based solely on this character, that’s what an impact Cruise had on the movie, although he was really just a secondary character.

You can help yourself in this regards by giving your star a great entrance.  I don’t want my hero to just meander onto the stage.  I want a great way to introduce that character.  Think Jack Sparrow in the first “Pirates of the Caribbean,” where he’s paddling a canoe towards the camera and it’s got a hole in it and slowly sinks.  He makes it just in time to stride onto the dock.  It’s one of the great entrances of all time.  And it doesn’t have to be that dramatic of an entrance, even Juno’s introduction when the heroine first appears, as she’s doing the pregnancy tests and shares banter with the pharmacist’s assistant was a very compelling way to introduce the heroine.

We want to start with a great scene where we meet our protagonist, there should be lots of color, the hero or heroine should be doing something really intriguing right off the bat.  This isn’t just for the reader, it will make the star you’re trying to entice do exactly that.

Every star wants great scenes, the best dialogue, to be in the most pivotal moments.  He or she knows the reason the film is getting made is because of them.  They realize they deserve these perks.  We’ll talk more about stars and commercial insights in the weeks to come.

Until then – KEEP WRITING!

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Hello, everyone.  As you know I’m always providing information you can’t get in your normal screenwriting class, screenwriting workshop or screenwriting course.

This week we take our cues from the pilot of “Dexter,” written by James Manos Jr., based on the novel: “Darkly Dreaming Dexter,” by Jeff Lindsay.  One of the best ways to learn is to study great examples from accomplished writers and this is as good as it gets…

FADE IN

ON THE FULL MOON

Millions of glittering stars behind it and as we start

pulling back off the stars, we HEAR the even VOICE of –

DEXTER (V.O.)

Tonight’s the night. And it’s going to

happen again and again. Has to happen.

PANNING DOWN

Passing the moon — wonderfully bright in all its redness.

DEXTER (V.O.)

Nice night.

PANNING FURTHER DOWN UNTIL

The moonlight illuminates the restless, inner city streets of Miami and we start moving through them — passing the neon lit bars with enthusiastic DRINKERS, clueless GERMAN TOURISTS, wearing shorts, black socks and sandals, long legged MODELS flirting on the boulevard, blue collar CUBANO MEN sipping espresso, a few scantily clad HOOKERS hawking johns and a band of RUNAWAYS looking for handouts –

DEXTER (V.O.)

Miami’s a great town — love the Cuban

food, pork sandwiches — my

favorite… but I’m hungry for

something different now.

A nervous middle-aged COUPLE, clearly lost, RACES in and out of the pools of light cast by the city street lights.

A HONDA CIVIC, CIRCA LATE 1980’s

Drives into frame, turns a corner, drives down a main

boulevard, approaches an intersection — the overhanging

light turns RED and as the car stops, we push into —

THE WINDSHIELD AND SEE

A MAN behind the wheel of that Civic but we can’t see his face.

CUT TO:

EXT. BAND SHELL – PARK – MIAMI, FL – NIGHT

PROUD PARENTS sit on the grass, opened picnic baskets in front of them.

Their eyes focused on two dozen BOYS (12-14) wearing snappy looking ties and jackets, singing a beautiful rendition of “Bach Magnificat.”

With a flourish, the tuxedoed CHOIR MASTER (40’s), handsome, all-American looking, with a scrubbed clean face, guides the boys to the stunning crescendo.

The CROWD stands, ERUPTS with applause. The boys smile.

The Choir Master turns, bows to the audience — more

applause, then rises, blows kisses to his perky little WIFE and their TWO young DAUGHTERS standing in the front row.

FREEZE FRAME ON THE CHOIR MASTER

DEXTER (V.O.)

(contained excitement)

There he is — Mike Donovan. He is the one.

BACK TO SCENE

The kids all walk off the stage, join their happy parents on the lawn. The Choir Master joins his wife, bends down, gives her a kiss, hugs his two sweet little girls.

Everyone starts packing up their picnic baskets —

CUT TO:

EXT. STREET – BORDERING THE PARK – MIAMI, FL – LATER

The Choir Master walks his wife and daughters to a Buick

sedan. Helps them get in, buckles up the kids — waves as the car drives off.

He turns, walks up the street, passes the Civic, but the Man sitting behind the wheel is no longer there.

NEW ANGLE

The Choir Master comes closer, closer to a —

FORD TAURUS STATION WAGON

And STOPS right before us, so close we can almost touch him. He fumbles in his pocket for his keys and after a beat, the key finally enters the lock, the station wagon door opens and as the Choir Master slides in behind the wheel, SUDDENLY —

A MAN

POPS UP from the back seat, quicker than a jack in the box, and with incredible quickness WHIPS a fishing line around the Choir Master’s neck, pulls it very TIGHT.

THE CHOIR MASTER’S EYES go wide and his face turns white.

The MAN behind him turns toward the camera, and we finally

SEE —

DEXTER’S FACE (30’s), good looking with carefully constructed features, eyes that are full of life.

FREEZE FRAME ON HIS FACE

DEXTER (V.O.)

My name is Dexter — Dexter Morgan and I’m going to kill this man tonight.

Great, isn’t it?  A real page turner, and this is 2 1/4 pages into the script.  Notice how clean the writing is, we go from image to image, and as we’re reading we’re seeing a movie.  The images are clear and striking, the innocent setting in contrast to Dexter’s V.O., which sets us up for something awful about to happen.  Notice how little details like this:  “GERMAN TOURISTS, wearing shorts, black socks and sandals,” can totally put you in the moment.

The writing is much more vertical than horizontal, important images are set apart by SLUG LINES, like this –

A MAN

POPS UP from the back seat.

This makes us feel the startling action.

This was all carefully constructed, written and rewritten to immediately pull in the reader.

Keep reading scripts, especially the great ones.  Let’s all learn from this and other examples.  If anyone would like to share their own samples of great writing from scripts they come across, please do so.  You can do this by going to “FILES” and “Create A Doc” and pasting in samples of writing or commenting on this one.  We’ll look at more examples in the week to come.

Until then – Keep writing!

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