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03/04/2006: Gunn For Hire?


So. Is anyone (or, possibly, everyone) else completely obsessed with Project Runway? This is what reality television was born to do. It's got actual documentary value, since you learn about a world you previously knew nothing about, plus it's got that contest element that makes for tremendous suspense. If you haven't seen the latest ep yet (the first half of the finale), and you don't want to know the latest, then skip the following paragraph.

Did you notice how everything is conspiring to make us think Daniel V isn't going to win? I have this strange suspicion that they're doing it on purpose to throw us off the track. If that's the case, then that would mean that producers told Tim Gunn to withhold praise from Daniel just to manipulate us. I love the show, but I feel a little bit like that would be cheating. Tim Gunn is supposed to be on THAT side of the camera, uninfluenced by gross matters of commerce and storytelling. I feel like there should be an information curtain between him and the producers, don't you? Ah well, perhaps there is, and Daniel V really has failed to impress. We may never know.

All right. Back to spec scriptwriting. There is a connection to what I just wrote, but it's tenuous... something about an information curtain. We all understand that a reader of script shouldn't be allowed to know more than a viewer of the eventual filmed product would. Thus, we purposely withhold information when we write our stage directions. It would be very strange, for example to include the following stage direction:

Jeremy sits up and notices that his tent smells strongly of boyenberries. His hair is then tousled by a shockingly warm wind that makes him think of his childhood in Florida.

The reader of such a direction is going to rightly wonder how the viewer is supposed to know about the scent of boyenberries and the temperature of the wind and the childhood memories.

None of you would, I'm confident, write such a direction. That isn't the danger. The danger is over-correction. In an effort to avoid telling too much, sometimes new writers tell too little. It turns out that it is perfectly all right in many cases to explain what a character is thinking. Here's a stage direction I've adapted from one I wrote for an episode of Buffy. Xander is in a phone booth, calling Buffy to warn her that he's been duplicated. Then his double walks past the phone booth. The stage direction reads:

The phone's still ringing and Xander is torn -- wait for Buffy to pick up? Or follow his double? He hesitates, then hangs up and follows Xander-Double.

In a script that is going to be produced, these kinds of directions help the director and the actor know how to play to moment. In a script that is going to be READ, they help the reader imagine an actor playing it, and thus tell the reader how to interpret the moment. There is nothing wrong with doing this.

In fact, you can do more than this. You can tell the reader not only what the character is thinking, but you can also tell them what they, the reader, should be thinking. From earlier in the same script:

The dump is empty now. Except that something lies half-buried in garbage, unnoticed. We push in. IT'S XANDER, still lying unconscious where he fell. So who just went off with Buffy?

That last question, "So who just went off with Buffy?" is what I want the reader of the script to be asking. I include it so they understand that it's all right for them to have this question at this time -- that I WANT them to be asking it.

Putting in little signposts like these will assure the reader that they're following the story.

Here's another, hypothetical, example. Suppose you're writing a spec for a medical show and you have one of your major characters suddenly say something wildly out of character. You're HOPING that the reader will notice that it's out of character and begin to suspect that the character has become infected with the brain disease that's sweeping the hospital. But what if the reader simply thinks you've written a crappy line? Well, it's all fixed if you can include a stage direction like "no one around him seems to notice that what was just said has a tinge of insanity to it."

Letting the reader know that they're following the story as you are intending them to, is a special kindness when you consider the constraints on time and attention span that a show-runner will have when they're reading your script. Make it easy!

Lunch: Indonesian food. Mmm. The best part is the dessert, a mountain of pink ice with bits of confetti-colored goo and fruit inside.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: It occurs to me that this entry may be confusing to those who have paid attention to my repeated warning that readers skip the stage directions. Hmm. Good point. But still, if they do read 'em, it'll be good if they're helpful.