Article / The Beautiful Page

Updated 10/16/09

This opening page has a lot of action and little dialogue. To keep white space and a clean look, write your action blocks in as few lines as possible. I tend towards 3 and 5. The trick is to have this white space and still end up with 52 to 54 lines per page.  Do what you gotta do, just don’t make it ‘look’ like a daunting read. Chances are if it looks daunting, it is daunting, and all the folks that need to find their information (actors, stage designer, director, lighting techs, etc… ) will spend a lot of valuable time mining the script.

As a screenwriter, you not only need to tell a compelling story that can translate into film, but you need also to create a document that is accessible.  It is no different than an architect’s responsibility to create not only an aesthetic structure, but also a set of blueprints all the parties can understand, and easily find their needed information (plumber, nailer, electrician, roofer, etc …).

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Excerpt from my book …

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One thing to keep in mind. White space. It’s vital to having a readable script. I’ll post both good and bad samples to demonstrate the difference.

We’ll start with the good, always a good omen. I’ll use the Sinclair and Grandpa scene to demonstrate what white space is all about.

White space is only possible once you have your brevity and your clarity down, and no rambling chunks of text stacked one on top of the other. White space is only possible when your dialogue is written to deliver background ‘harmonies’ to what the reader sees in their mind through crisp, pithy action and slugs (we will cover writing visually next).

In short, white space lets the reader’s eyes float down the page, like reading a poem, or sheet music (okay, maybe not Bartok). If your reader’s eyes gets bogged down in a swamp of text, they will start to skim looking for something – anything – important, and eventually just lose interest.

If your reader is skimming, something has gone terribly wrong with your page aesthtetics.
Who is a reader? Anyone who needs to access the ‘document’ for information about their particular role, be it an actor or a lighting tech. And, should you ever venture in the cruel world of spec, a reader is someone who can move your hard work forward to the next level, or toss it in the can. If there isn’t any white space, it screams ‘daunting task – story be damned’ and in the can it goes.

If you are writing to sell, or just get a film made, and are peddling your wares to filmmakers and producers, you need to make a good impression on page one. The filmmaker/producer will glance at the title page, then flip it open. If they see what appears to be novel, it may end right there.

One thing screenwriting is not, is a great idea poorly written, and poorly presented. A filmmaker/producer who reads a lot of scripts may draw the unfortunate conclusion that the script is amatuer, and miss a great, or even brilliant story.

Okay, so page one …

Some stories open with a lot of action and little if any dialogue.

BLACK SCREEN

City noises.

Jack hammers echo as car horns, police whistles and church bells peal. A distant radio haemorrhages gospel. A car door slams.

Leaves rustle in a breeze as birds volley chirps. A BUTTERFLY FLUTTERS.

Then …

… the sound of a hundred footsteps begins to build; marching, dragging, clicking, then suddenly stop as tires

screech and glass shatters.

FADE IN

EXT. FINANCIAL DISRTRICT – SAN FRANCISCO – DAY

A wet and colorless corner. SALLY REED, early 30s, slender and athletic, BLUE eyes, and BLIND, jumps backwards, her white cane jousts with the unseen danger.

HER BLIND EYES …

… search the darkness for the noise as she yells. …

SALLY

Alice! Alice!

Behind Sally, a crowd of pedestrians, all dressed in gray,

stand motionless, expressionless, silent.

In the b.g. an AD LIB argument ensues over who is at fault with the accident as …

… Sally gathers her wits, scans her surroundings with her

ears. A BUTTERFLY flutters past.

A breath. A cough. A shoe scuffs.

Sally speaks.

SALLY

Excuse me. Do I continue straight for the Darwin’s Platypus building?

I am a big fan of text wrap to create white space and to set a rhythm when a lot of action needs to presented. The other way, and here a pretty good vocabulary really helps, is knowing when to use a ten letter word instead of its five letter synonym so you can kick your action line down with one, maybe two words hanging at the end, such as ‘unseen danger’ in the above sample. Note how that, and ‘HER BLIND EYES’ floating all by itself create a nice block of white space just before Sally’s first dialogue (more samples will follow).

Or, you add a few fluff words to get the same result. Here’s where you tell brevity to take a chill pill for just a second, and add those few extra words.

Note both samples above end with dialogue. It’s not always possible, but for opening pages, I strive to ‘design’ them so dialogue leads the reader to page two. Getting a reader from page one to page two is a big accomplishment, and how that all-important first page is presented, with a visual aesthetics that ‘invites’ the reader in, will make a huge contribution to that end game.

A chunk of action at the bottom of page one feels like an anchor. Plunk! Go for dialogue if you can somehow pull it off.

In the Sinclair/Grandpa scene, it originally ended with Grandpa buttoning his lip. I moved a few things around, and managed to get his dialogue to close the page instead.

It’s all very psychological!
EXT. FINANCIAL DISRTRICT – SAN FRANCISCO – DAY

A wet and colorless corner. SALLY REED, early 30s, slender and athletic, BLUE eyes, and BLIND, jumps backwards, her white cane jousts with the unseen danger. Her blind eyes search the darkness for the noise.

SALLY

Alice! Alice!

Behind Sally, a crowd of pedestrians, all dressed in gray,

stand motionless, expressionless, silent.

Here I have compressed the action around Sally’s first dialogue. Feels kinda smashed in there. If it was a five-line dialogue it wouldn’t be such an issue. Note also I took out ‘as she yells’ as it kicked down a line, and I wanted to show how this looks without the white space. Even adding those three words back in lightens this up.
Like this …

EXT. FINANCIAL DISRTRICT – SAN FRANCISCO – DAY

A wet and colorless corner. SALLY REED, early 30s, slender and athletic, BLUE eyes, and BLIND, jumps backwards, her white cane jousts with the unseen danger. Her blind eyes search the darkness for the noise as she yells.

SALLY

Alice! Alice!

Behind Sally, a crowd of pedestrians, all dressed in gray,

stand motionless, expressionless, silent.

 

Now, all three samples together…

EXT. FINANCIAL DISRTRICT – SAN FRANCISCO – DAY

A wet and colorless corner. SALLY REED, early 30s, slender and athletic, BLUE eyes, and BLIND, jumps backwards, her white cane jousts with the unseen danger. Her blind eyes search the darkness for the noise.

SALLY

Alice! Alice!

Behind Sally, a crowd of pedestrians, all dressed in gray,

stand motionless, expressionless, silent.

And this …

EXT. FINANCIAL DISRTRICT – SAN FRANCISCO – DAY

A wet and colorless corner. SALLY REED, early 30s, slender and athletic, BLUE eyes, and BLIND, jumps backwards, her white cane jousts with the unseen danger. Her blind eyes search the darkness for the noise as she yells.

SALLY

Alice! Alice!

Behind Sally, a crowd of pedestrians, all dressed in gray,

stand motionless, expressionless, silent.

And this …

EXT. FINANCIAL DISRTRICT – SAN FRANCISCO – DAY

A wet and colorless corner. SALLY REED, early 30s, slender and athletic, BLUE eyes, and BLIND, jumps backwards, her white cane jousts with the unseen danger.

HER BLIND EYES …

… search the darkness for the noise as she yells. …

SALLY

Alice! Alice!

Behind Sally, a crowd of pedestrians, all dressed in gray,

stand motionless, expressionless, silent.

See how it opens up? Breathe baby, breathe!

NOTE: THIS NEEDS TO BE DONE AS A ‘PHOTO’ FOR YOU TO SEE HOW THIS LOOKS ON THE PAGE. i’LL DO THAT ASAP.

Do we use more lines? Yeah, but the pay-off is big. Brevity and clarity give you the luxury to open it up like this. If space really is an issue, opt for the second choice and get one word, two max, to give you a little breathing room. Now lets look at action blocks staked up.

Wait, before we do that, here is a fantastic resource for any writer …
http://www.rhymezone.com/
If you’re stuck on a word, or find the word you have written kicks either your dialogue or your action down a line, and it just so happens that by doing so, it kicks itself or that below it to the next page … and leaves you with a few lines of unused space at the bottom of the page (tragic when you’re trying to pack a story into six pages), then go here and try to find a shorter synonym.

Resplendent for example, could be replaced with exquisite, and saves two letters and possibly a kick-down (in the film Kate and Leopold, the butler’s use of resplendent was the right choice, and I would have tossed a few lines to keep it).

Visa-versa on all this if you need a longer word to kick your dialogue and/or action down to make some white space.

INT. SOPHIA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT

Resplendent. Sophia enters with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

INT. SOPHIA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT

Panache. Sophia enters with a bottle of wine, two glasses.

INT. SOPHIA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT

Resplendent. Sophia enters with wine and two glasses.

INT. SOPHIA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT

Sumptuous and feninine. Sophia enters with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

INT. SOPHIA’S BEDROOM – NIGHT

Sumptuous. Sophia enters with wine and two glasses.

INT. SUMPTUOUS BEDROOM – NIGHT

Sophia enters with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

Take the time to play around with it. Don’t just write, compose! Eventually we’ll get to rhythm, and how to write with a ‘ba bump ba bump’ (cadence) in the words you pick. Resplendent may fit as concerns white space, but is it compatible with the other words, and can you read it with out tripping on your tongue?

In music there is a lot of poetic license to monkey with words to get a rhythm – because becomes cuz, and there is always the wanna and the gonna, etc. In screenplay dialogue it’s acceptable, but no can do in your action or slugs.

Okay, stacked action blocks …

Two Japanese swords collide with-in inches of Jon’s face. He flips up, karate kicks both, gets his own sword, and takes out Carafuckinbou.

Jon melts back into the dark.

Thug #1 and Ice are the only two left standing. They look into the dark abyss as Carafuckinbou bleeds in silence.

God Zilla watches the sword-wielding Thug #1 steps into the darkness. Ice waits, gun at the ready.

Silence, then the clang of steel against steel, and the swoosh of a blade as it cuts the air.

The fight moves toward the light. Glimpses of polished blades. Ice watches, unsure which sword belongs to whom, watches as they slide back into the darkness.

A silence. A thud. Another silence.

Thug #1’s head rolls out, the dead eyes stare straight up. Ice panics, unloads the gun into the darkness. Then silence. Then another swoosh.

Between the darkness and the light, a sword come to an abrupt halt straight up, behind it the focused eyes of Jon.  Jon moves forward. Ice scrambles to un-holster his second 9MM.

Approaching sirens break the silence. Ice glances around, then back to Jon. Gone.

EXT. GOD ZILLA’S DRUG LAB – BACKDOOR – DAY

Ice and God Zilla burst through the door, hop in a made-for-speed car, and peel away. Around the corner, police cars converge.

GOD ZILLA’S DRUG LAB – FRONT DOOR

As police cars surround the warehouse, the door opens. Every gun in New York is trained on it.

Jon appears, clothes blood-soaked, the sword still in his hand. A pissed-off Captain Fisher approaches.

CAPTAIN FISHER

I better see one handcuffed God Zilla when I walk through that door, mother fucker.

Little if any white space. The only thing saving this is there are no massive chunks of text, but it still bogs down the read. Lets see if we can open this up, even if it means bumping down to another page. Better to have 110 pages of readable script than a 90 page tar pit.

Conversely, In a 6-page competition, this opening up for the sake of white space is difficult if not impossible. It’s one of the first screenplay tools I’ll toss when push comes to shove. Ya gotta do what’cha gotta do.

Let’s open this up a bit …

Two Japanese swords collide with-in inches of Jon’s face. He flips up, karate kicks both, gets his own sword, and takes out Carafuckinbou.

Jon melts back into the dark.

Thug #1 and Ice are the only two left standing. They look into the dark abyss as Carafuckinbou bleeds in silence. God Zilla watches the sword-wielding Thug #1 steps into the darkness. Ice waits, gun at the ready.

Silence.

then the clang of steel against steel, and the swoosh of a blade as it cuts the air.

The fight moves toward the light. Glimpses of polished blades. Ice watches, unsure which sword belongs to whom, watches as they slide back into the darkness.

A silence. A thud. Another silence.

Thug #1’s head rolls out, the dead eyes stare straight up. Ice panics, unloads the gun into the darkness. Then silence. Then another swoosh.

Between the darkness and the light, a sword come to an abrupt halt straight up, behind it the focused eyes of Jon.  Jon moves forward. Ice scrambles to un-holster his second 9MM.

Approaching sirens break the silence. Ice glances around, then back to Jon. Gone.

EXT. GOD ZILLA’S DRUG LAB – BACKDOOR – DAY

Ice and God Zilla burst through the door, hop in a made-for-speed car, and peel away. Around the corner, police cars converge.

GOD ZILLA’S DRUG LAB – FRONT DOOR

As police cars surround the warehouse, the door opens. Every gun in New York is trained on it.

Jon appears, clothes blood-soaked, the sword still in his hand. A pissed-off Captain Fisher approaches.

CAPTAIN FISHER

I better see one handcuffed God Zilla when I walk through that door, mother fucker.