To WE or not to WE

Goodwriterguy · May 5, 2009

I've suffered some heavy busts in the SYW forum for using the "WE" construction in the first ten pages of a Western I posted up there. The cricis seem to think this construction is an absolute "no-no" and shant be used in any case whatsoever.

I of course don't agree. I think that sentences like this

We’ll revisit them soon enough, but for now WE

CUT TO:

or this

This is EMMETT DALTON, in his youth a train and
bank-robbing outlaw and all-round wild man in the
Old West, as WE will see, but now a successful
businessman and writer, though a stoic and
perhaps somewhat cynical one.

are appropriate.

[Redacted--JDM] has this to say about the "we" construction:
[Edited out. Don't link or quote this site on AW, please. The site owner sends me multiple harassing emails and DMCA threats, to multiple email addresses-thanks, Mac]

I couldn't agree more with [Redacted--JDM] that they key is indeed not to overuse it, which is true for many of the various elements that comprise the screenplay's lingua franca, but perhaps especially true for this one.

I also know this, that the "we" construction was overused and abused by many screenwriters (or more accurately perhaps, aspiring screenwriters) for a long time hrough the 90's and into the 2000's, until the convention police came down hard on it and insisted that it was verboten. That was an appropriate criticism to my mind.

But I don't think it should be seen as being absolutely verboten, as some over in SYW appear to think.

Thoughts?

craftyprincess · May 5, 2009

It has its place, such as "A Rose for Emily," but generally, I don't think second person works when you really are trying to create a first person point of view. Using it as a true second person pov comes off as chit chatting w/the reader, IMHO. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is difficult to pull off well.

Stylo · May 5, 2009

I was tempted to use 'we' in my first full length script, but managed to think of another way round the problem. I've got to say the script flowed better without the 'w' word.

As for the blue examples in your post gwg, I can't see why the 'we' sentences are needed at all. IMO they seem too 'narrator-like'.

icerose · May 5, 2009

The only time I use "we" is when something comes into view that the main character isn't seeing and I use "we" to clarify. Even that being said I use it very very rarely, like maybe once every four or five scripts rarely.

There is almost always a better way to write it that pulls the reader in. Because "we" tells the audience what they're supposed to be seeing rather than just showing them what they're supposed to be seeing.

dpaterso · May 5, 2009

As with all things, unnecessary overuse becomes a tad irksome and may give the impression of weaker writing -- kinda like using too many adverbs in prose. But each to their own style, use "we see" if it pleases you. If we all wrote exactly the same way, the world would be a boring place.

Looking at your examples, you're using a friendly conversational style as if you're talking to your reader. That's an each to their own choice, too.

-Derek

Goodwriterguy · May 5, 2009

dpaterso said:
As with all things, unnecessary overuse becomes a tad irksome and may give the impression of weaker writing -- kinda like using too many adverbs in prose. But each to their own style, use "we see" if it pleases you. If we all wrote exactly the same way, the world would be a boring place.

I think "we see" is off limits altogether. I've not ever used it and wouldn't.

dpaterso said:
Looking at your examples, you're using a friendly conversational style as if you're talking to your reader. That's an each to their own choice, too.

In the first instance (of my two examples) you are exactly correct, but the second is a character introduction, the texts of which are necessarily not part of the movie, or one's narrative. They are a direct communication with our reader. Present tense, a narrative rule, does not apply for example, we might write, "In his youth he got beat up a lot, and he was badly wounded in Irag" in introducing a character. One of my favorites is this,

"Meet JIMBO RED-AT-NIGHT, a blood Sioux and rock and roll arsonist."

Introdution are unique this way in a script. They are clear asides to the reader. Otherwise, the narrative is nothing but describing "what we see" anyway, except we just do it ... we don't preface it with who sees what, as in "we see the gun."

Of course you see the gun, I wrote it in, didn't you see her draw when you read that she did?

So we don't need to write "we see" ... not when the whole danged concept of writing a movie on the page is a cinematic "we see" exercise, (introductory paragraphs aside).

A comment that brings in a scene transition is prepatory, almost like turning a page when you're reading, which indeed prepares you to read that page. It's a brief beat in the read-movie experience in which the movie itself stops so that we can communicate to our reader that when the movie starts again it'll be in an entirely different place and probably involve other characters than the one's we just spent eight minutes with. CUT TO:

Then the movie starts again. The whole thing takes about a tenth of a second to get. It has the qualities of a flourish but it does convey usable information: we are going somewhere else.

It's a movie thing not a story thing. Just as I think character intros are as well. They too require that the movie stops for a beat. We write them once and we are succinct about it. But when a reader reads our introductory text, the movie has stopped for them, this is backgrounder, this isn't the movie, now they're meeting a character, learning something about them, it's only a brief paragraph.

A micro beat in a read.

These are admittedly among the finer points, but I think the distinctions and their purposes are helpful in making the form work for us ... because we'll know when we're writing the movie and when we're speaking to our reader, and the reader will get it because they understand the difference too, "ahh, this is an introductory paragraph," the subtext of which is "this isn't the movie, which we'll be getting back to almost before you can blink.

Most of us do this intuitively anyway.

Seems to me we're on the same page (no pun intended)

Cyia · May 5, 2009

How I look at it:

"We" don't appear on screen, so "we" shouldn't be in the script of what is to appear on screen.

It's directing on the page, what the audience sees and when they see it is ultimately up to the director, not the writer. It's a matter of blocking and camera angle. Writers shouldn't play in the director's toolbox unless they're also directing the film.

Enzo · May 5, 2009

Agreeing with Cyia here.

If I saw 'we see' in a script, I would think it was a shooting script, with the writer giving camera directions.
I also feel that whatever's on the page of a screenplay, is meant to be seen. So there's no need to add 'we see.'

ricetalks · May 5, 2009

The problem here is not that you are directing on the page. The problem with your use of "we see" is that you are referencing something about the character on the page which you are then using to tie that character back to an earilier scene in a way that the viewer of the final film can in no way see or identify. The only thing we can see and know about Emmett Dalton is this: He is (age), what he wears, what he looks like, that he drinks or doesn't, We can only know what we see. All of this other stuff that you have by way of character introduction can only be known as the story unfolds. And that is the job of the story. And to simply write it as an introduction and think that you have done your job is a cheat. We cannot know that he was a bank robber in his youth by merey looking at him. Hell, we can't even know that he is now a successful businessman and writer now in his present life, in his present moment just by looking at him. You can say he is a stoic and somewhat cynical writer if you want, but you'd better be ready to prove that in very short order.

Your using your language in the descriptives of character to reference them and hold them togeher from scene to scene, and that's cheating. Because in the final film, it can't work at all. The audiences in the final film is going to be saying, "Okay, where are we and who is this now?" because they CAN'T KNOW the way you have done things. And that is what the problem is with what you are doing.

We see six riders. That's it. We don't know who they are. We know they are riding. And we can certainly have an idea about their intent; their demeanor. But that's it.

Next, we're in Hollywood. 1937. We see a man. An older man. He is abviously successful. His wife is in the movies. He has some sort of connection to the past. We might assume or guess that he is Emmett Dalton, but yet we do not KNOW FOR CERTAIN that he is. That is still to be confirmed to us. Still to unfold. It isn't so because you say it is so in the description.

Goodwriterguy · May 6, 2009

Cyia said:
How I look at it:

"We" don't appear on screen, so "we" shouldn't be in the script of what is to appear on screen.

It's directing on the page, what the audience sees and when they see it is ultimately up to the director, not the writer. It's a matter of blocking and camera angle. Writers shouldn't play in the director's toolbox unless they're also directing the film.

Scene captions, character intros, scene transition outs or transition ins don't appear on the screen either, but we include them in our scripts.

Not 100% of all the words in a script relate to or bear on what's to appear on the screen, just about 97% of them do. And yes in that 97%, which we refer to as our narrative, a writer must describe his or her movie and do nothing else.

But what about the other three per cent (or whatever it works out to be)?

How many times have we read,

SCENE CAPTION

Scene description/dilaogue.

FADE OUT

FADE IN

SCENE CAPTION

Plenty of times (and yes I know that FADE OUT should be right justified, but in this software if you tag a paragraph as right justfied it sends it six miles across the page and if you use blank spaces to move it over to the right where it belongs, the software doesn't recognize them and leaves the paragraph sitting on the left margin, as it has in this case. And anyone who knows the trick of getting this done, I'd appreciate knowing it!)

Fade out and fade in are effects, movie effects that help tell the story but aren't story elements themselves.

In effect, a screenwriter "directs on the page" every time he or she writes a series of narrative paragraphs that describe a scene or an unfolding sequence of events or actions.

When a director breaks a script down he or she breaks down master scenes a screenwriter has written. They'll evaluate the writer's paragraphs to see which ones describe an ANGLE and incude them in their shot breakdown, assuming they agree and often they do, especially when the writer's done a good and proper job..

Robert Towne went so far as to place a period just outside the left margin at the beginning of every narrative paragraph he thought was an ANGLE, his code for this is an ANGLE.

If a screenwriter writes

Joe runs to the rail and leaps overboard, lands in the water with a splash.

Halfway up the mast, Mickey climbs, scampering like a monkey.

Wouldn't we assume these paragraphs would be separately shot, that is, each be filmed in their own ANGLE?

I certainly would.

Our audience is seeing only that which is described in individual paragraphs from beat to beat to beat. When a reader is reading the first paragraph above, they aren't seeing Mickey climb, they're seeing Joe leap overboard, and that's all they're seeing. They don't see Mickey until they read the next paragraph ... so the paragraph break acts like a cut and in many cases will actually be a cut in the picture.

This is why screenwriter's are advised to avoid writing,

Joe runs to the rail and leaps overboard, lands in the water
with a splash. Halfway up the mast, Mickey climbs, scampering
like a monkey.

Two different actions in the same paragraph.

I think the advice is to write separate actions in separate paragraphs.

This awards the read a more cinematic quality, because on average movies cut every eight to ten or twelve seconds and that's about how long it takes to read a three line paragraph. The paragraph approximates a cut.

A screenwriter writes a movie ... in which his or her screen tale unfolds in a series of master scenes, which are themseles comprised of paragraphs that describe distinctly unique actions that, along with dialogue, tell the tale as it unfolds. Those paragraphs of necessity must convey the imagery in a sequence that befits the writer's telling of their tale, they can't be backwards or mixed up, they must assume a particular order. First he opens the door, then he struts through it.

This is writing for the screen.

Ultimately, yes, a director makes the final decisions as to what's filmed in the master scene and what's filmed in separate ANGLES, such as REACTION SHOTS, CLOSE UPS, POVs, CUTAWAYS, and so on. Directors shoot tons of POVs for use in dialogue scenes; they'll shoot a master of two characters exchanging, then shoot one actor doing his or her lines for the camera and then the other doing their lines for the camera (or selected lines), and then the editor cuts the footage together to create the scene, altering from one to the other to the other in a sequence the director has indicated at the time of filming, which are recorded by the script supervisor as editing notes. Some of these kinds of sequences are obligatory, which diretors learn in film school.

A writer does not write all those POVs.

But in action scenes a writer does write implied ANGLES by virtue of their paragraph structure and what's described in each. A writer can't help but do this since they're describing unfolding action which often involves a sequence of different actions taken by different characters which simply cannot be captured in the master scene footage alone.

Back to the "we" situation -- I think we all agree that "we see" isn't necessary, since every bit of narrative we write is describing what "we see" anyway. But in those parts of a script that aren't the story or even the movie, as in character intros and scene transitions, the movie has stopped for a mico beat and the writer is speaking directly to their reader, in the form of an aside to the movie/narrative.

And it is in those parts where the use of "we" is perfectly acceptable. And I do agree with [Redacted--JDM] that from time to time a reference to "we' in the narratrive will represent the best way to get a point across.

Every movie has dissolves or fade outs and/or fade ins and other editing effects that are visual, they help convey the story but they aren't story narrative themselves. They are movie things not story things.

For example in movies we depict the passage of some significant amount of time by using a dissolve, we have to get there from here and "there" is six months down the road. So we dissolve to it, and that conveys a sense that time has passed when the new scene commences, Audiences have been conditioned to this by decades of movie watching.

We can also cut to it and then establish that six months has elapsed using some other technique, like supered text, or some reference in the dialogue. But we dare not leave our audience uninformed in this regard, nor our reader. We have to inform them so they can keep track of what's going on with our tale. Hence DISSOLVE TO: when a significant amount of time is going to pass between two scenes.

Readers read it, the audience sees it. They both get it. Which is what we want.

Cheers, eh?

Stijn Hommes · May 6, 2009

Goodwriterguy said:
We’ll revisit them soon enough, but for now WE

CUT TO:

or this

This is EMMETT DALTON, in his youth a train and
bank-robbing outlaw and all-round wild man in the
Old West, as WE will see, but now a successful
businessman and writer, though a stoic and
perhaps somewhat cynical one.

Both instances use we in a manner that focuses on the reader rather than the character which people tend to find jarring unless it is a character directly talking to the audience. Also, in the first instance you don't need that sentence. You can remove it entirely and simply cut to:

In the second example, you use it to describe something people can't see on the screen and which will be evident later on in the story, so at that time, it's not needed.

Finally, WE tends to be shunned in scripts, because it tends to get used in instances when the writer tries to cover up attempts at directing. Not saying that is the case here, but it explains why people don't like it.

clockwork · May 6, 2009

Goodwriterguy said:
I've suffered some heavy busts in the SYW forum for using the "WE" construction in the first ten pages of a Western I posted up there. The cricis seem to think this construction is an absolute "no-no" and shant be used in any case whatsoever.

I of course don't agree. I think that sentences like this

We’ll revisit them soon enough, but for now WE

CUT TO:

or this

This is EMMETT DALTON, in his youth a train and
bank-robbing outlaw and all-round wild man in the
Old West, as WE will see, but now a successful
businessman and writer, though a stoic and
perhaps somewhat cynical one.

are appropriate.

I couldn't agree more with Terry that they key is indeed not to overuse it, which is true for many of the various elements that comprise the screenplay's lingua franca, but perhaps especially true for this one.

I also know this, that the "we" construction was overused and abused by many screenwriters (or more accurately perhaps, aspiring screenwriters) for a long time hrough the 90's and into the 2000's, until the convention police came down hard on it and insisted that it was verboten. That was an appropriate criticism to my mind.

But I don't think it should be seen as being absolutely verboten, as some over in SYW appear to think.

Thoughts?

I use 'we' now and then. It's a subconscious tapping of the fingers but for whatever reason I feel it's appropriate at that time. It doesn't bother me that I'm speaking to the reader; the best scripts I've read all do that on some level. It's got to be done sparingly and with skill but it's a tool at your disposal if you need it. When it's done well, it doesn't even register with a reader. It's simply part of the read.

As for directing on the page, personally, I don't see what part of screenwriting isn't directing on the page. Writers really do nothing but direct. Obviously, you don't want to mention a particular film stock or the exact length of dolly track you need but you do need to represent the movie on the page. Not words, not the feel of it, the *actual* movie. It should always strive to be more than words on the page; it shouldn't just be a sterile transcript of events. There should be expertise and flair in how the story is communicated. Sometimes doing something unexpected or against the grain is exactly what's needed. Again, done well and sparingly.

So assuming you know how to do it, then you should write however you feel is going to best and most fully do that. Maybe it'll be a mistake (maybe you're not ready yet) but finding your voice is just as important as what you do with it. An original voice is something producers are always looking for and yours should be unique and passionate and capable. Your script should still smell like a script and less is always more but 'we' and all the other no-nos are just tools at your disposal, should you choose to use them. Whether it'll pay off depends on you.

nmstevens · May 6, 2009

Enzo said:
Agreeing with Cyia here.

If I saw 'we see' in a script, I would think it was a shooting script, with the writer giving camera directions.
I also feel that whatever's on the page of a screenplay, is meant to be seen. So there's no need to add 'we see.'

Okay -- once again, I have to disabuse people of this notion that there is such a thing as a "shooting script" that has been rewritten to include camera directions.

There just isn't any such thing. The shooting script is simply the final locked draft of the screenplay with scene numbers included.

Nobody goes through it -- neither the director nor the writer at the director's behest, nor anybody else and puts in things like, ANGLE ON GEORGE.

If that's in the screenplay, it was just there. It doesn't indicate that you've reached a particular draft in which that was inserted.

The only exception is if production wants something like an establishing shot that isn't indicated -- because that's a separate scene and that would need to be written in so that it can be scheduled.

So you'd have to write in: EXT. A BROWNSTONE - DAY

That way, they know to schedule a crew to get a shot of a brownstone.

But as a rule, the particular coverage of a scene is going to be worked out by a director in consulation with his D.P. and memorialized in the form of either story boards or a shot list. It isn't going to be written into the text of the screenplay.

As far as "we see" -- while it's true that you can usually work your way around it, often you can only do it by escaping to the awkward passive tense.

Instead of, "A SHAPE moves in the darkness -- and then we see TWO GLEAMING RED EYES, staring down," you end up writing something like, "A SHAPE moves in the darkness -- and then TWO GLEAMING RED EYES *are seen* staring down."

The passive tense may avoid "we see" but it's hardly better, as it begs the question of -- "seen by who?"

I find that I'll use "we see" rarely -- maybe a few times in a screenplay, and it's always pretty much in the same context -- when I want to emphasize *the way* in which something is seen.

There's a sort of mantra that you just describe what happens and then the director figures out how to shoot it.

But anybody who's ever seen any movie knows that movies aren't just a camera pointed at "what happens" -- any more than a book is simply a description of "what happens."

The way in which a scene is shot -- what is shows or what it fails to show, or the way in which a line is spoken, for that matter, can be critically important to the unfolding of the story.

We aren't simply "story tellers" -- we tell stories in the medium of motion pictures. We just tell those stories on the page -- and all of the tools of that medium have to be accessible to us, since all of the tools that are *not* available to the medium of motion pictures are clearly denied to us.

So if a key revelation in a scene depends on a cut, or a camera move, we can't simply "describe what happens" -- because our job isn't to describe what happens in some non-existent alternate world that a director is going to visit and in which he's going to make a documentary that will become the finished film.

Our job is to describe what's going to happen on the *movie screen* that our audience will ultimately see.

Sometimes, that means we have to make it clear -- not just "what happens" -- but specifically what the audience sees or doesn't see and how.

And it's moments like that when you find yourself using, "we see."

Or, for that matter, sometimes even, "we don't see" -- because sometimes, that's just as important.

NMS

jonpiper · May 6, 2009

I don't mind reading "we see" in a script. Asides are fine too. Depends on the style and voice of the writer, and the story. Neither of them should be in a script when the passage would be stronger, the story would flow better, without them.

Goodwriterguy, in your sample, I think you should reexamine your use of "we see" and and asides.

For example, here are two places I think you would be better off getting rid of the asides.

We'll get to know these riders soon enough but
for now they just press on, death on a roll,
inexorable.

Of course we'll get to know these riders soon enough, this is a story after all. Aren't I smart enough to figure out that if they are important characters, we'll learn a lot about them as the story progresses. I have seen a movie or two in the past.

You don't have to tell me now that they are important to the story. Let me become absorbed in the action and drama and find out for myself.
Let the story play out.

I don't think the above aside adds to the mood of the story nor to the impending doom. In my opinion it detracts.

We'll revisit them soon enough, but for now WE

CUT TO:

Again, why tell the reader and audience you are leaving this time period and jumping to another.

Let us be jolted. We learn soon enough we are in a new time period.

I don't think this is an appropriate place for this kind of aside. It doesn't add to the read. It's certainly not a cute or witty aside.

In my opinion it doesn't add to the read, sort of detracts, like you put in in there for no other reason than to exhibit your voice.

Perhaps add the date of the next scene to the slug and move up the Super as I've done.

EXT HOME - HOLLYWOOD HILLS (1937) - NIGHT

In the backyard a tall haggard 67 year-old
gentleman in a charcoal suit holds a drink in his
hand and watches a scantily clad pretty young
thing swim in the pool.

SUPER: "HOLLYWOOD HILLS - SPRING, 1937"

I know, I know, it's much easier to criticize than to create.

Goodwriterguy · May 6, 2009

ricetalks said:
The problem here is not that you are directing on the page. The problem with your use of "we see"

I didn't use "we see" though!

Nowhere in those ten pages I posted up will you find this term, and you'd not find it in any screenplay I've ever written, either.

ricetalks said:
is that you are referencing something about the character on the page which you are then using to tie that character back to an earilier scene in a way that the viewer of the final film can in no way see or identify. The only thing we can see and know about Emmett Dalton is this: He is (age), what he wears, what he looks like, that he drinks or doesn't, We can only know what we see.

And of course what we hear.

There seems to be several things in the script that you missed which go a long way toward showing the audience who this 67 year-old gentleman is, to wit:

PHOTOGRAPHER
Mr. Dalton! How about a shot with your wife?

Now we know he's "Mr. Dalton."

Then, when Emmett comes down the stairs and starts the movie projector, there's this:

Emmett relaxes in an overstuffed and watches the movie, in which he himself stars, a much younger man who flails about on a galloping steed, gun drawn, firing at some horse mounted pursuers, who drop like flies.

"In which he himself stars ..." So now we know he's a movie star, we actually see him in a role on the screen.

He's the one that's in the movies, not Julia.

And, before this, when Julia brings in Young Man, she says,

JULIA
You could at least visit with him for a
minute, couldn’t you Em?

"Em" an endearing term for "Emmett."

And earlier, he has a rather lengthy exchange with Young Man in which it's made rather clear that he was indeed an outlaw in his younger days, with speeches like this:

Emmett shows him a bullet.

EMMETT
That was dug out of my shoulder at
Coffeyville. I was awake and face
down on a mattress and rifles were
held to my head. It hit the

doctor’s pan like a marble.

and this,

EMMETT
Cole Younger was my cousin;
neighbored the James boys in
Kearny, Missouri. The James-
Younger gang was our inspiration.
They robbed stagecoaches, trains,
the Kansas City Fair, a bank in
Northfield, Minnesota, that did
them in; shopkeepers took after
them with shotguns, spade handles,
and rocks they’d picked up in the
streets.

YOUNG MAN
Then you and your brothers did the
same. You don’t seem very sorry
about any of it.
(off emmett’s look)
I mean, you murdered all those

people.

There is ample evidence provided as to who this 67 year-old gentleman is today (in 1937) and who he was in his younger days. "The James-Younger gang was our inspiration."

And then of course the audience has seen all those headlines go by when Emmett digs through that box of old clippings and reads the press accounts of his exploits, his sentencing to prison, the fact that "he's in Hollywood." And of course, this information is available to the reader as well as the audience (the headlines are capped and in quotes, which means they are to be readable from the screen).

Are you sure you read those ten pages? Or did you read them too fast?

ricetalks said:
All of this other stuff that you have by way of character introduction can only be known as the story unfolds. And that is the job of the story. And to simply write it as an introduction and think that you have done your job is a cheat. We cannot know that he was a bank robber in his youth by merey looking at him. Hell, we can't even know that he is now a successful businessman and writer now in his present life, in his present moment just by looking at him. You can say he is a stoic and somewhat cynical writer if you want, but you'd better be ready to prove that in very short order.

Well, as I've shown in the foregoing, the audience does in fact learn a great deal about Mr. Dalton in the scenes that occur at his home in 1937; they learn his name, they learn that he's a movie star, they learn that he was an outlaw in his younger days, they learn that he was shot full of holes at some point and has an old wound that's not healing, they learn that he served 14 years in prison, and they learn that he's cynical and truculent.

I think all the bases that were mentioned in his introduction are adequately covered off in the ensuing few moments of screen time.

I have no clue as to why you missed all of that, but clearly you did.

ricetalks said:
Your using your language in the descriptives of character to reference them and hold them togeher from scene to scene, and that's cheating. Because in the final film, it can't work at all. The audiences in the final film is going to be saying, "Okay, where are we and who is this now?" because they CAN'T KNOW the way you have done things. And that is what the problem is with what you are doing.

I think if you go back and read those ten pages again you will find that the audience can indeed know, as I've tried to elaborate above. I in fact think they'll know everything they need to know to be comfortable with what they're seeing. Ad none of that relies on what was written in the introductory paragraph, which is, BTW, strictly for a reader, to help them form expectations about what they might expect from the character as the story unfolds.

ricetalks said:
We see six riders. That's it. We don't know who they are. We know they are riding. And we can certainly have an idea about their intent; their demeanor. But that's it.

Yep, exactly as intended by me.

It's a sequence that might even be run with the titles.

ricetalks said:
Next, we're in Hollywood. 1937. We see a man. An older man. He is abviously successful. His wife is in the movies. He has some sort of connection to the past. We might assume or guess that he is Emmett Dalton, but yet we do not KNOW FOR CERTAIN that he is. That is still to be confirmed to us. Still to unfold. It isn't so because you say it is so in the description.

Certainly not, a character introduction doesn't have that purpose; it's there exclusively to inform a reader.

I think if you go back and review those ten pages you'll discover that we can in fact know for certain that the gentleman in question is indeed Emmett Dalton from what's seen and from what's heard in the dialogue.

Please don't assume that a writer who posts up ten pages doesn't undertand that a character introduction is 1) for a reader exclusively and 2) that whatever's said about a character in their introduction must be made manifest in the movie as it unfolds, which in this case I think was adequately set forth.

Writer's depend upon readers to read. Every word counts.

Anyway, on we go.

ricetalks · May 6, 2009

"Yep, as intended by me."

Yes. And I'm pointing that out because it does work because you have stuck to what you can know. In reference to that scene with the kid and Emmett Dalton, I think you'd better read my post in Share Your Work because, as I point out, that whole scene and all its conversations are nothing but exposition. Yes, you've set it forth, but in the worst way possible. All of these facts that you have laid out in exposition we must learn through the actions of the story as it unfolds. To tell who the character is and then re-enforce it with exposition only compounds the original problem.

mommyjo2 · May 6, 2009

Using the "we'll see later" or "we'll revisit" or "we CUT TO:" 8 times in 10 pages is too much.

Just MHO.

ricetalks · May 6, 2009

And it doesn't matter whether or not you actually used "WE SEE", cause, personally, I don't have a problem with that, I'm just using that to reference the problem that people are talking about. The problem is with AS WE WILL SEE, because, what you are in fact doing is saying to the reader, "Stay with me now, because I'll come back to this" and it is not something you get to do when the film is made. It is your job to put the story together in such a manner that the audience and the reader STAYS WITH YOU because you have made it so, not because you told them to do so, which is what you are doing when you write this way. You are saying' "Hang on! DOn't leave! I'll get back to this! Remember, this is important because I am going to come back to this." Well, I say that you are cheating on your writing. And the only one you are cheating is yourself. Learn to do it without it. It's not bad once in a while, buy when you are using it to hold the story together, then it's a problem.

I didn't even have a problem with the first time you did it. "We'll come back to these riders late, but for now WE CUT TO:"

BUt by the time you were filling in details of Emmett's past life, I got a problem.

Cyia · May 6, 2009

ricetalks said:
And it doesn't matter whether or not you actually used "WE SEE", cause, personally, I don't have a problem with that, I'm just using that to reference the problem that people are talking about. The problem is with AS WE WILL SEE, because, what you are in fact doing is saying to the reader, "Stay with me now, because I'll come back to this" and it is not something you get to do when the film is made. It is your job to put the story together in such a manner that the audience and the reader STAYS WITH YOU because you have made it so, not because you told them to do so, which is what you are doing when you write this way. You are saying' "Hang on! DOn't leave! I'll get back to this! Remember, this is important because I am going to come back to this." Well, I say that you are cheating on your writing. And the only one you are cheating is yourself. Learn to do it without it. It's not bad once in a while, buy when you are using it to hold the story together, then it's a problem.

I didn't even have a problem with the first time you did it. "We'll come back to these riders late, but for now WE CUT TO:"

BUt by the time you were filling in details of Emmett's past life, I got a problem.

Not only is it cheating, it wastes precious space. Tack all of those asides together and you'd probably gain a page or two (or three) throughout your screenplay that could be used for plot. There's no excuse for wasted space - and no chance to defend your method if the screenplay gets a "pass" because the reader got annoyed with all of the asides.

Goodwriterguy · May 6, 2009

ricetalks said:
And it doesn't matter whether or not you actually used "WE SEE", cause, personally, I don't have a problem with that, I'm just using that to reference the problem that people are talking about. The problem is with AS WE WILL SEE, because, what you are in fact doing is saying to the reader, "Stay with me now, because I'll come back to this" and it is not something you get to do when the film is made.

But actually, you do, because the cut performs that function for the audience. I'm not only telling my reader to "Stay with me now, because I'll come back to this" I am telling the director and the editor to do a cut that conveys that idea to the audience. That's why it's a declared cut and not just the implied cut that occurs every time a new scene is declared. Those cuts are standard; declared cuts aren't, they have special qualities about them that seek to convey an idea to the audience, the way a dissolve does.

Most assuredly, the "as we will see" is a direct aside to the reader, informing them that whatever has been promised to this point can be expected to become manifest. That's "the kind of movie this will be." It allows a reader to hold any angsts they may have acquired from the story to this point aside, because they know we'll be returning to these characters ... and that probably all angsts will be resolved when we do. Read on without those angsts churning in you. The audience gets this from the cut.

ricetalks said:
BUt by the time you were filling in details of Emmett's past life, I got a problem.

A problem with a screenwriter who's doing what he's supposed to do?

My guess is you didn't read my introductory paragraph as an introductory paragraph, you read it as though it were narrative, so when you came to "filling in the details" you thought because you already knew them (from having read the introductory paragraph) that the audience would know them too?

The audience doesn't get anything until they see/hear it. You the reader, however, get a little advance notice ... when the writer introduces the character. It is an aside to you the reader and should not be imposed on the audience, for whom it isn't intended. The writer has to show them.

ricetalks said:
It is your job to put the story together in such a manner that the audience and the reader STAYS WITH YOU because you have made it so, not because you told them to do so, which is what you are doing when you write this way. You are saying' "Hang on! DOn't leave! I'll get back to this! Remember, this is important because I am going to come back to this." Well, I say that you are cheating on your writing. And the only one you are cheating is yourself. Learn to do it without it. It's not bad once in a while, buy when you are using it to hold the story together, then it's a problem.

What would the difference be in the read if the cut was not declared?

The next scene is in an entirely different location and involves a completely different set of characters doing something entirely different and is in a different time setting.

A sequence has ended, a new one is about to launch. That's a unique beat in a movie, a delineation, a line, a change.

The audience sees the same visage as it would if the cut were not declared, if the CUT TO: was absent. The movie just rolls on. There is a cut that's most likely not quite the same as all the cuts that have occurred in the preceding scenes, those standard cuts an editor does in his sleep. Directors go to film school to learn how those kinds of cuts are done and gotten into the can.

I have interrupted the showing of my movie to my reader for a microbeat to convey to them that a cinematic event is about to occur, which oh by the way our audience will see and experience, and further by the way, and yes, we will be returning to the characters you've just spent several moments with.

The need for this microbeat is induced by the fact that the page isn't the film. If I could just show you my movie, I'd not need that microbeat, you'd see it on the screen (in the form of a cut) but since my movie's not been made yet I can't show it to you, the best I can do is render it on the page for you, and that's a one-stepped removed process, so we need all the help we can get here in conveying it from the page.

There are 21 declared CUT TO:'s in "American Beauty." Declared scene transitions are almost as common as apple pie in screenplays, many of which end with the expression "as WE." So it's not like I've invented anything here. It's more like I'm emulating some good screenwriters or just might be one myself.

The movie's not the page, film isn't paper, a movie theater's not some cozy overstuffed with a script in your hands. The form's conventions exist to help us get our movie off in the imaginations of readers. Why is a declared transition right justified?

You elected to not respond to my comments regarding how much we get to know who the 67 year-old gentleman is in what few screen moments we have to page seven ... so I'll assume that you agree it's enough. And I assume that you'll now see that the promises that were made in Emmett's introduction were faithfully kept through the subsequent scenes, until the cut that occurs on page seven. And that there was no "cheating" in play in any of that.

The next time we see Emmett he's a seventeen year-old kid and we're on page 11. There's 97 minutes of film to go and in those 97 minutes we'll see the story unfold on the screen as he grows from a green kid to a mature bad assed outlaw, the only one who manages to survive what they rode into Coffeyville, Kansas to do that day and go on from there to serve 14 years in prison and then go out to Hollywood and become a star and a rich man, still with the woman he loved when he was twenty.

Electing to use a prologue approach in the telling of this screen tale is a cinematic decision. It's a way of setting a lot of things up. On film the movie ends when Emmett Dalton is plugged full of lead in a Coffeyvile alley while attempting a mounted escape from the maelstrom that's already killed Grat and Bob and several others, including the two bankers and Mr. Cubine the shoemaker.

By all appearances Emmett does not survive ... and earlier we've seen the scars of those 18 bullet holes. But of course we know he does survive, and we know what he goes on to do, and we've seen Grat and Bob die and Eugenia run so their stories are over too. The story's been told, all that needs to be known is now known, nothing is left unresolved. The movie can end now.

Moving right along ...

ricetalks · May 7, 2009

Yes, THE CUT does that IF it is the right cut. Let the cut do it on the page in exactly the same manner as it would in the finished film. Because the other way, you don't KNOW if it is working because you are informing the reader through an aside.

That's NOT what you are suppose to do. You are NOT suppose to be filling in back story in your character descriptions. Because it is NOT character descriptions, it's back story. It READS like narrative, and that is EXACTLY the problem.

My guess is you didn't read my introductory paragraph as an introductory paragraph, you read it as though it were narrative, so when you came to "filling in the details" you thought because you already knew them (from having read the introductory paragraph) that the audience would know them too?

I'm not sure I can even follow the rational of this convoluted defense.

"What would the difference be in the read if the cut was not declared?"

There is nothing wrong with declaring the cut. That's not what I am addressing myself to. Oh, by the way, I went to film school and worked as a film editor. BUt it doesn't make one witt of difference to what I am pointing out.

You elected to not respond to my comments regarding how much we get to know who the 67 year-old gentleman is in what few screen moments we have to page seven ... so I'll assume that you agree it's enough. And I assume that you'll now see that the promises that were made in Emmett's introduction were faithfully kept through the subsequent scenes, until the cut that occurs on page seven. And that there was no "cheating" in play in any of that.

I did repsond to this. It is in Share Your Work. I suggest you read it. It is ALL EXPOSITION. Your characters talk, Emmett and the Kid, and say things YOU want them to say, but they are speaking words that they have no reason to speak. ANd that is called EXPOSITION.

When I read your ten pages, this is what you have.

Six riders ride into a small western town. They are intent on doing something bad.

We meet two shoe cobblers.

And then cut to:

An older gentleman in Hollywood probably some 40 years later. He has a big house. A wife. He works in the film business. Then WE SEE clippings of him in newpapers and news reels. These things help us fill in who he is a little. (Cut the scene with the kid, it's all just exposition. Not good as drama. Find another way to get your exposition out.) THEN WE CUT TO

TWO NEW GUYS. One dead in a coffin. A sherriff. (Which we only know by, again, too much exposition). One the younger brother.

And that is the end of your ten pages.

Who's story is this? Who is your main character? (I only know because you have told me in your posts.) Who is telling the story?

Let me soften all of this criticism a little. I like your writing. I like your writing style. I think the descriptives are good. I have no problem with you using CUT TO and WE SEE. The specific problem I have is that in your particular assembly of the story, the events you have laid out give, at the end of the ten pages, I don't know what the story is really about.

I think when you cut from the six riders and you cut to Emmett in Hollywood in 1937, your next scene HAS TO go back to Emmett as a young man. Introducing two more new characters at that point is stretching the audience too far, because of all of the places you have taken them, and all of the different characters they have met, they are left wondering where their attention should be. And that is the way it is going to play out in the film. And, ultimately, that is all that matters.

Plot Device · May 7, 2009

I use "we" sparingly, only when I have no other options, and only if the dramatic impact upon "the reading expereince" is utterly dependent on and is best serviced via the employment of a "we" in a given situation. I do indeed run into ALL of the above from time to time. I prefer that I resort to it 2 or 3 times in a script at the very very most. I'm more comfortable with it only being 1 time in a given script. Ideally, it should be "never." But "never" simply never happens.

scriptwriter74 · May 7, 2009

barf

"and now We cut to:"

that is putrid, no further comments necessary.

clockwork · May 7, 2009

It was actually "but for now we cut to" but that's beside the point. Please keep comments constructive or I'll close the thread.

nmstevens · May 7, 2009

While I don't necessarily agree with a number of the choices that Goodwriterguy made in the sample that he posted -- and they're things that I wouldn't necessarily do myself, I think that he raises an issue that is worthy of discussion.

There are clearly things that happen on screen in a finished film -- things that occur with a kind of immediacy and almost effortlessly, simply by virtue of the fact that people are *seeing* the story unfold rather than reading it off pieces of paper or a computer screen, that make the two experiences quite different.

Yet the goal, in writing a screenplay, is not just writing a story in an arbitrary format -- it's to try to make the reader see that as-yet-unmade movie in their heads.

That often means using the tools of one medium -- prose -- in an attempt to approximate the experience of another -- that of a visual medium that consists of a flow of succeeding images that deliver information to a viewer in an immediate fashion that reading can never duplicate.

And sometimes that means using the devices of prose -- things like metaphors and asides and other purely literary devices -- to succinctly convey a sense of a character or a place or a situation that would, were you *watching the movie* -- would be immediately apparently to you as a viewer, but which you really can't convey through bare, literal description in a way that is optimally effective.

And that, really, it the test -- what is the way to convey that sense of the finished scene in a way that is optimally effective to the reader.

NMS

To WE or not to WE

Goodwriterguy

craftyprincess

Stylo

wall gazer extraordinaire

icerose

Lost in School Work

dpaterso

Also in our Discord and IRC chat channels

Goodwriterguy

Cyia

Rewriting My Destiny

Enzo

ricetalks

Goodwriterguy

Stijn Hommes

Know what you write...

clockwork

In the zone...

nmstevens

What happened?

jonpiper

Goodwriterguy

ricetalks

mommyjo2

Bad grammar make me [sic]

ricetalks

Cyia

Rewriting My Destiny

Goodwriterguy

ricetalks

Plot Device

A woman said to write like a man.

scriptwriter74

Sirius

clockwork

In the zone...

nmstevens

What happened?