Where one of the scenes involved does not have any dialogue and is merely a few lines of description here and there. The whole thing was already written once and I went back to beef up these parts. But, the thing is, a few lines of description is all that is necessary. The issue is one of pacing. I want these scens to be drawn out more than they seem to be. (in terms of how much space they take up on the page) My intent is for these scenes not to seem so short. Any thoughts? Thanks.
I've got this juxtaposition I'm stuck on...
- Thread starter LIVIN
- Start date
Have you tried using separate action lines and ellipses to break it up?
Like:
Betty's slender fingers touch the piano keys...
...her eyes close as she begins to play
...strains of "Heart and Soul" fill the room
...Muffled shouts are heard through the door as the rest of the family runs for their lives.
Or, you could try this from a Firefly script:
http://www.timminear.net/ff_pdfs/Firefly_1AGE07_-_OutOfGas.pdf
Scene 2 "Various shots of the ship. Quietly holding images."
BTW, the bottom of p. 5 kind of illustrates the action breakup like I posted above - that technique works better for action, though, IMO.
Like:
Betty's slender fingers touch the piano keys...
...her eyes close as she begins to play
...strains of "Heart and Soul" fill the room
...Muffled shouts are heard through the door as the rest of the family runs for their lives.
Or, you could try this from a Firefly script:
http://www.timminear.net/ff_pdfs/Firefly_1AGE07_-_OutOfGas.pdf
Scene 2 "Various shots of the ship. Quietly holding images."
BTW, the bottom of p. 5 kind of illustrates the action breakup like I posted above - that technique works better for action, though, IMO.
Your scenes will only run for as long as something is happening. If nothing is happening, you can't draw them out any longer than they are without it jumping off the page.
If I write a scene where a cat walks into a room and sits there, I can go on to describe the ambient noise, lighting conditions, appearance and demeanour of the cat, colour of the floors and walls and a thousand other things but it'll be dull as hell because the cat's still just sitting there.
If the cat comes in the room, sits and then notices the dog sitting opposite, that's something I can build on. If you want to extend your scenes, make something happen, put some conflict in. I really believe there's the opportunity for conflict in every scene and by conflict I don't mean arguments and shoot outs. It's just something that happens to challenge the flow of the scene.
I wrote a brief intro for a character in a script awhile ago whereby we saw this character (a woman) doing things in her daily life, in this case, buying a coffee from Starbucks. So I had her at the register, paying for the drink and then leaving. Very dull. So I gave her a muffin as well. And then the clerk gave her all her change in coins. And then there was a line behind her getting impatient. So she's juggling all these things and by the time she moves away from the register, she's dropped everything all over the floor. It worked out perfectly because it was a visual representation of the kind of person she was - good at her job but not very capable of functioning in "the real world."
But you could change that to suit any personality. If she's a smokin' hot black widow, she could flirt with some guy on the way out. She's antisocial now so when the guy in line behind her sneezes, she grabs a couple of napkins from the counter and thrusts them at him with an eye roll. If she's nosy, we might see her pour an endless amount of sugar into her coffee as she eavesdrops on the conversation at the next table.
My point is, if you want to extend your scenes, make sure something interesting happens.
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