Newbie questions

Scripts work in minutes. Your page count determines how long the feature will be, with each page coming out to roughly a minute. Therefore, you can't afford to waste precious minutes describing lengthy action scenes. Your job is to write a compelling story, the director will take care of the direction.

Deepspirit said:

In the script that I'm writing, the first piece of dialog appears on page three (in PDF, after formatting in Celtx). The first two pages show the protagonist being chased by an assassin. Will this negatively effect my script? Should the dialog come earlier?

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It isn't totally unknown.

For example:
The draft I have of XXX doesn't have any dialog for the first two pages.
The Terminator draft doesn't have any dialog until the bottom of the second page.
Terminator Two - No dialog (apart from the narrator) until the bottom of the 3rd page
Saving Private Ryan - No dialog for two pages

etc

If it works, it works.

If not, it doesn't.

You want to draw the viewer into the world as soon as possible.

If you can do that best without using dialog, then that's fine.

Heck - 'Wall-E' managed to leave dialog until the second half of the film !


Good luck,

Mac

Mac H. said:

It isn't totally unknown.

For example:
The draft I have of XXX doesn't have any dialog for the first two pages.
The Terminator draft doesn't have any dialog until the bottom of the second page.
Terminator Two - No dialog (apart from the narrator) until the bottom of the 3rd page
Saving Private Ryan - No dialog for two pages

etc

If it works, it works.

If not, it doesn't.

You want to draw the viewer into the world as soon as possible.

If you can do that best without using dialog, then that's fine.

Heck - 'Wall-E' managed to leave dialog until the second half of the film !


Good luck,

Mac

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In this case, it's also definitely important that your description be concise and well-written. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, one Mac mentioned, is incredibly compelling and cinematic.

Keep it clean, and keep it brisk.

What you are doing can be dangerous. But like Script-A-Wish said, keep it clean, keep it brisk, plenty of white space. You dont want two pages of brick paragraphs describing the action. You want fast pages.

Remember, you want to hook the reader fast. So if you can do that with 2 pages of action to kick it off- good for you. But if you are stuffing in too many details and the page is getting dark with words- you're going to lose your reader really fast.

Movement is important. If you have no dialog you must be very compelling in your visual images. However, be very careful not to try and dictate too much to the director. As was said, you must involve your audience. I recently sold a script that has no dialogue in the first couple of minutes but I wrote it that way at the request of the director. His call, not mine.

Cybernaught said:

Scripts work in minutes. Your page count determines how long the feature will be, with each page coming out to roughly a minute. Therefore, you can't afford to waste precious minutes describing lengthy action scenes. Your job is to write a compelling story, the director will take care of the direction.

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I fear comments like this can be misinterpreted or misunderstood. I come across so many scripts where writers don't want to appear to be "directing on the page" so they don't bother putting the story on the page.

Where "He picks up the phone." "She plops down on the couch." are the depth and breadth of the action lines.

Screenplays are stories told primarily through action and visual images and lastly dialogue. If you can show it rather than tell us through dialogue it's all the better. A good script should be equal parts description and dialogue - certain genres, like action should actually have more descriptions than dialogue.

It's true you don't want to have a lot of lengthy descriptions or the types of unnecessary detail that slow down the read, but you do want to describe what we see and what people are doing. It's part of the overall storytelling.

it is not wasting time to have long action scenes if those scenes are progressing the story and it's not directing on the page to describe what's happening on the screen. In fact that's your job.

Read the sword fighting scenes in The Princess Bride. That scene is very detailed in its action because its relevant to both character development and plot. It's a very good read - and by that I mean entertaining, vivid, visual and great storytelling. It's a scene with dialogue, but the descriptions are in the forefront.

If the action is compelling enough and the pages are well written and what happens is plot - related. It's fine to have no dialogue for the first few minutes. But the action better be riveting.