The 10-Page Torture Test

SEVENTEEN by M84

Logline: "A naive seventeen-year-old girl falls for a boy who rides with a murdering, drug-dealing motorcycle gang in New York City."

Otherwise pitched as:  PRETTY IN PINK meets THE LOST BOYS with a dash of MULHOLLAND DRIVE.

Do I have your attention now?  Yuh-huh, that's quite the story promise.  And this, our anonymous writer's first screenplay --

Now, before you run screaming across the lawn and hilariously step on a leaf rake, I assure you this writer can write.  Moreover, he (or she!) has already slipped a couple screenwriter formatting tricks up her (or his!) sleeve.

The one thing you want to hear when you're starting out is this: "Keep going."  I hope M84 keeps going.

Usual disclaimer: My revisions are suggestions only.  Probably some will be plain wrong for what the author had in mind. The purpose of these 10PTTs is to explore the rewriting process, probe the various paths of possibility.  Inevitably some of those will be dead ends.

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NOTES

Disclaimer: I don't have a pretty screenplay-format plug-in for my site.  As usual when I'm revising scenes, you'll have to make do with my pseudo-screenplay text format.  Notably, I present character names and dialogue on one line.

Disclaimer 2: I ignored the supplied logline while doing this 10PTT.  A lot can be assumed from the logline.  I don't care about any of that.  I'm going by what's on the page only.


1.

I began to edit, then I realized the sentence is doing the work of a car navigation system.  Right turn, left turn -- who cares.  We don't need much more than a general feeling of swooping down into the city.  We don't need a detailed flight plan.

You know, the first time I read this opener I imagined our POV was a camera on a small drone aircraft.  A drone doing surveillance.  Only on the second read did I begin thinking our POV is not a camera drone but a living entity.  Something supernatural or superhuman.  Something that can fly.  And hunt.  And make people scream.

Nothing's clear, the way it's written.  Prior to the scene's final sentence we could reasonably and confidently conclude our POV is from an aerial drone camera.  Look at the description so far:  hover, descend, turn, fly closer, we ZOOM down (dual interpretations for that one!).  All naturally match how we might describe a compact rotor-driven aerial drone.

Then we close the scene with behavior we would NOT expect from a drone: the street kids shoot at us, having "no effect."  I do not interpret that "no effect" as meaning the shots miss.  I believe the author's intention is to say some bullets do hit -- but have no effect.  Bullets would shatter a lightweight aerial drone.  Ergo we, the POV, are not an aerial drone.  The final sentence supports this conclusion.  We, the POV, ATTACK the street kids, evidenced by the cut-away and SCREAM.

So, yeah.  Not a drone.  This needs to be clear in the text.  The page must tell us we're in a living POV, not a mechanical one.  It must faithfully describe what will play on screen.  If the author intends to misdirect the audience -- intially have them believe the POV is a drone then, at the end, clearly depict the POV as being sentient, alive -- then that too must be articulated on the page.

I'll take a stab at it.

-----
EXT. NEW YORK CITY - NIGHT

ONE HUNDRED FEET above.  We hover over the ragged skyline, observing, searching, then...

Slowly we dive into the noise pollution of this restless, slumbering city.

SIXTY FEET

Streets below lit up for nobody but a few cars.  Unhurried, we sail over one street, another.  Still descending.

THIRTY FEET.  Picking up the pace.  Zeroing in on:

A DARK ALLEY

Movement in the shadows.  People.  We close in fast --

FIFTEEN FEET

-- and get a look at them: five inner city kids.  One notices, points at us.

YOUTH: HOLY SHIT!

They panic, run, some pull guns, shoot blindly --

BLAM BLAM BLAM!!

A shudder.  Are we hit?  Doesn't matter.  We swoop down upon them in a rush of speed and hunger, UNSTOPPABLE.

NEW YORK CITY SKYLINE

The city sleeps.  A distant SCREAM peaks and fades.

-----

We used roughly the same amount of words (orig: 124; revised: 136) but we goosed the sentences, adding more "feeling" to counterbalance the "facts." We made it very clear our POV is a living, breathing force of (super)nature.  See too how we managed the descent by encoding our altitude into the shot slugs: 100, 60, 30, 15 feet and diving.  By removing the "right turn" stuff, we instead focus on that foreboding, inexorable descent to ground level.



2. Audio transitions/intros

[Just saw I failed to capitalize CHRIS in my markup.  Um... "Fuck it, we'll do it live!"]

Two ways we can play this segue.  I marked up my preferred way, which avoids any language contortions: give the reader the names, to anchor the dialogue.

One issue remains: Chris is a gender neutral name.  We could assume Chris is male.  We don't want that.  Leaving it ambiguous could give readers whiplash moments later when we make clear Chris is female.  So, let's fix it now.

-----
BLACK.

Two youthful female voices float above the dim AMBIENT NOISE of midtown New York.

LOLA (V.O): Where's Julie?

CHRIS (V.O.): Still in the bathroom, I think.

A POLICE SIREN warbles left to right, fades.

LOLA (V.O): Still?  My god, she needs to hurry up!
-----

Hmmm.  Is V.O. correct here?  Really, what's happening is PRE-LAP, not V.O.  The dialogue is synchronous and internal to the scene, not external to it -- strong factors against V.O.'s suitability.  If we're in BLACK and hearing their voices, has the scene technically begun?  Or does it begin only when we exit from black?  Is there a case for using O.S. instead of V.O.?  If we're in the scene then, yes, the speaking characters are off screen, i.e. under black and not visible.  Bah, doesn't matter.  V.O. it is.

We establish early how these are female voices.  That removes any opportunity for the reader to decide Chris is male.

I reckon we can airlock-eject those V.O.s too, with a smidge more context up front (rendering the whole V.O./O.S./PRE-LAP discussion moot):

-----
OVER BLACK:

The dim AMBIENT NOISE of midtown New York.  Add two youthful female voices.

LOLA: Where's Julie?

CHRIS: Still in the bathroom, I think.

A POLICE SIREN warbles left to right, fades.

LOLA: Still?  My god, she needs to hurry up!

CUT TO:

INT. LINCOLN CENTER MOVIE THEATER - NIGHT - SAME

JULIE, a wide-eyed 17-year-old, fills our view.  She descends slowly from what looks like a red sky.
-----

Hold it right there.  What just happened?

One: we dismantled some screenplay scaffolding, stripped it down to basics, and now the mechanics of formatting are less obvious, less distracting.

Two: we discarded the slug part that gives away how she's riding an escalator.  If Julie's intro plays out the way we want it to, the movie audience won't know right away she's riding an escalator, so why tip off the reader?  Let the reader hang for a moment too.  There's no real confusion here, just a tantalizing moment of narrative free-fall to keep your reader alert.

Three: we started revising Julie's intro.  "Fills up our frame" is fine.  Really, it's no biggie.  We understand the shot.  But... didn't we just revise this scene to hide much of the exposed technical wiring?  We sure did.  But then "frame" goes and yanks us out of the experience, back into the reality of "Remember, this is a movie, folks!"

We've got options.  Always we've got options.  Instead of "fills up our frame" we could try -- like I did -- "fills our view."  Or what about:

-----
CLOSE ON: JULIE, a wide-eyed 17-year-old.  She descends slowly from what looks like a red sky.
-----

CLOSE ON... WIDER... WIDEN TO REVEAL... UNCOMFORTABLY TIGHT ON...  The generic "close" and "wide" go a long way toward efficiently managing your reader's focus without resorting to filmmaking jargon.  You're not writing for the DOP, the focus puller, the camera grip.  Yes, it feels cool and knowledgable to slip in a BOOM UP ON... FAST DOLLY IN TO... TRACKING WITH... or a USE 14 MM LENS FOR AWESOME WIDENESS!  In your pre-shooting drafts wrangle your audience using suggestion, not equipment.

If she's "wide-eyed" then we're tight on her face, right?  With the "red sky" behind her.  So let's focus on her face.

-----
JULIE, 17.  Big bright eyes.  At first glance, a face easily dismissed as unremarkable.  She descends slowly from what looks like a red sky.
-----

Boom.  Those eyes.  That face.  And we didn't have to remind the reader how Julie "fills up our frame."  Plus, we did some character building along the way: she's plain looking at first, but look again and know she's more than she appears.

Oh oh oh.  Hey, this visual flourish with Julie seeming to float down from a red sky.  Is this meant to be a thematic match with our opener?  With our predator descending from the NY night sky?  Way too early to say.  Yeah, I'm probably overreaching.

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NOTES

3.

TITLE: or TITLE OVER: and we're done.


4.

We solved this problem by using their names in the preceding scene.


5.

Chris, as we'll come to learn, is the runt of this pack, even though she's only a year behind Lola and Julie.  We get a clinical illustration of that in "Chris follows the two as they walk."  But how about an evocative illustration?  "Shadows the older girls" makes plain why she's a second-tier friend in this trio: she's not grown-up enough.  (All of this being my interpretation, which might not match the writer's intentions.)


6.

I suppose a run-on sentence might be justified here.  But I see no need for it.  Two possible revisions come to mind:

"Nothing. These guys just tried to talk to me. They said we went to the same school -- that they know you?"

"Nothing. These guys just tried to talk to me, said we went to the same school, that they know you?"

On the other hand, perhaps talking without pauses will be Julie's thing: her unique manner of speech.  If so, sure, go ahead, use run-on sentences.  But use them consistently.

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NOTES

7.

I think "lost in her texting" is more apt.  What is she doing?  She's texting.  Emphasize the act.


8.

"Get to get away" sounds clumsy to my ear.


9.

Stay vigilant and fix these basic punctuation issues before the screenplay goes out the door.  Hitting several of these per page makes me wonder if the writer cares enough about the written word.  If there's a "you had one job!" for writers (and there is) it's this: write clearly and competently.  Maybe that's two jobs.  Whatever.  Basic grammar and punctuation cannot be ignored.  You hearing this, Quentin Tarantino?


10.

Three jobs!  You had three jobs!  Write clearly, write competently, and check for typos!  I know, I know, a few typos always evade detection.  Aim to keep your screenplay typo tally countable on one hand -- preferably without requiring a thumb.

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NOTES

11.

That parenthetical should be on its own indented line.


12.

"Come on, Julie!  Me, you, him and his friend -- this is perfect."

or

"Come on, Julie!  Me, you, him and his friend.  This is perfect."

Although -- and I say this grudgingly -- I'm sorta warming to the teen rapidfire no-punktuation thing.  First Julie, now Lola.  So long as this is a deliberate style choice, not a lack of grammar fundamentals on the writer's part, my arm could be twisted.  I won't bother to mark up these from here on.


13.

Out of nowhere and therefore disorienting.  Plus, the sentence is confusing for anyone who doesn't immediately intuit the oblique reference to the NY subway system.  I don't live in a city with a pervasive undergrain transport system like NY.  It took me a moment to figure out the intended meaning.  At first I assumed it meant they feel through their feet the vibrations of a nearby train -- not a subway train, a regular train.

Which brings us to the other issue with this paragraph: "They all feel it."

Okay, but how do you show this?  What visual/aural elements combine to explain what's going on?  Let's roll the scene in our heads, figure out exactly how this plays out:

-----
The girls walk and talk.  We see the subway entrance ahead.  We hear the rumble and screech of an approaching subway train. (And we probably feel it in the theater bass subwoofer.)  Interrupted, the girls scramble to get to the platform in time.
-----

Maybe we don't see the subway entrance until later -- if we're going for a more moody, mysterious feel:

-----
The girls walk and talk.  We hear the rumble and screech of some underground behemoth. Interrupted, the girls run to the entrance of: 66th St. Train Station.
-----

Converting the first scenario into scriptwriting:

-----
JULIE: Take her.  She actually wants to go --

Subway station entrance ahead.  The ground RUMBLES -- a train's coming.

LOLA: Let's go, come on!

INT. 66TH ST. SUBWAY STATION

Lola and Chris butt-slide down the silver handrail.
-----

No confusion there for non-NY readers, once we add the word "subway" to connect the dots.

We dropped "They all feel it" because: (a) of course they feel it, we SEE them reacting; and (b) it's an instantaneous thing: Oh shit, train's here, let's GO!

SITUATION/CONTEXT -> DEVELOPMENT -> REACTION

Situation: They want to catch a train.
Development: Train arriving.
Reaction: Let's go! Come on!

Note how you can stop reading after any beat and everything up to that point still makes sense.

Stray from that sequence at your peril.

Straying: Example 1
----
Development: Train approaching.
Situation: They want to catch a train.
Reaction: Let's go! Come on!

JULIE: Take her.  She actually wants to go --

The ground RUMBLES -- a train's coming.

Subway station entrance ahead.

LOLA: Let's go, come on!

INT. 66TH ST. SUBWAY STATION

Lola and Chris butt-slide down the silver handrail.
-----

Keep in mind, we still have no idea they're headed for the subway -- notwithstanding that NY readers will intuit this immediately.  So, abruptly mentioning a train will catch some readers off guard.

Straying: Example 2
-----
Reaction: Let's go! Come on!
Development: Train approaching.
Situation: They want to catch a train.

JULIE: Take her.  She actually wants to go --

LOLA: Let's go, come on!

The ground RUMBLES -- a train's coming.

Subway station entrance ahead.

INT. 66TH ST. SUBWAY STATION

Lola and Chris butt-slide down the silver handrail.
-----

If we stop reading after Lola's line, we have no idea what Lola's talking about:

-----
JULIE: Take her.  She actually wants to go --
LOLA: Let's go, come on!
-----

So, like SUBJECT -> VERB -> OBJECT is the baseline for sentences, keep your thoughts linear, one building logically upon the other: SITUATION -> DEVELOPMENT -> REACTION.

Yes, you will stray on occasion.  But you'll do so deliberately and for dramatic effect.

Start with the simple basics.  Build layer upon layer.  With your sentences and story captured in your first draft in a clear and linear way, now you get to be creative and clever in later drafts.


14.

I'm not a fan of using ellipses for bridging scenes.  It's a personal preference thing.  I'd rather use em-dashes (--).  Ems/dashes indicate an abrupt break, a sudden change.  Ellipses indicate a pause, a lull in proceedings.

Here we want to convey the urgency and motion bridging the scenes.  Using ellipses has the opposite effect -- for me, anyway.

-----
LOLA: Come on, come on!

They CHARGE into --

INT. 66TH ST. TRAIN STATION

Lola and Chris BUTT-SLIDE down the silver handrail while Julie ROCKETS down the adjoining stairs in three-step strides.
-----

I reckon that's all we need.  Just one dash to hook us into the kinetic motion of the next scene.  We didn't rely too much on punctuation; we set up the feeling of speed with our word choices: charge, slide, rocket, stride.


15.

Italicising "jumps" is, as the saying goes, putting lipstick on a pig.  "Jumps" is a bland verb.  Italicising, underlining, or capitalizing is wasted effort.  If you want to make "jump" stand out, swap in a stronger verb.

"Lola hurdles the turnstile."
"Lola surfs over the turnstile."
"Lola leaps the turnstile."
"Lola vaults over the turnstile."

I see we have the same problem with "goes under."

"Chris slips under it."
"Chris skids under it."
"Chris slides under it."
"Chris ducks under it."
"Chris weaves under it."
"Chris darts under it."
"Chris scrambles under it."

And so on.  Save "goes" for when you need to move people/things around with minimum fuss, minimum attention.

"Jack goes to the window.  Lets the sunlight warm his face.  He smiles.  For a moment he imagines he's not about to die."

But here, we're revelling in the furious movement on screen, so "goes" will not do, not at all.


16.

If the announcement comes from a speaker somewhere around the platform then yes, I suppose it's O.S.

If it comes from a speaker in, say, the ceiling of the train carriage then I'd argue the sound source is in the scene and therefore we need no O.S. tag.

I don't know the details for how the NY subway system operates, so I can't guess which is more likely.


17.

Lotsa punctuation issues so far.  Errant capitalization, run-on sentences, missing commas.  It's not disturbing the flow too much so far, but it's a concern.  If every page is like this, we have a serious problem.

Now: the repetition of "Lola holds the door."  If we must repeat an action, at least vary the writing to disguise it.

-----
Inside the train, Lola holds the door for Julie.

CHRIS: Come on hurry up!

TRANSIT RECORDING: PLEASE CLEAR THE CLOSING DOORS.

Lola fights the door.

LOLA: Come on!  Come on!
-----

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NOTES

18.

We lose some steam here, in the way we mush the actions together.  How about we divide those swipes for dramatic tension:

-----
Julie swipes her Metro card.  Swipes again!  Finally let through --
-----

A common way to handle two streams of simultaneous action coming together, like here, is with character mini-slugs.

-----

INSIDE TRAIN

Lola holds the door for Julie.

CHRIS: Come on hurry up!

TRANSIT RECORDING: PLEASE CLEAR THE CLOSING DOORS.

Lola fights the door.

LOLA: Come on!  Come on!

JULIE

swipes her Metro card.  Swipes again!  Finally gets through --

IN TRAIN

TRAIN OPERATOR (O.S.): LADY, LET GO OF THE DOOR!

Lola's losing the battle -- then Julie wedges herself in the door gap, squeezes in.

The girls laugh, buzzing with adrenaline.

-----

That kind of thing.  It pleasantly accentuates those cuts back and forth.


19.

Cool.  Mini-slug.  There we go!


20.

Or, since hers is the next line of dialogue:

-----
INSIDE TRAIN

Without missing a beat:

LOLA: So, we're on, right?
-----


21.

Nods a no?  Typically, "nod" is an up-and-down head motion.  A side-to-side head motion is "shake."  Google for yourself with query words "grammar head nod shake".

So, here, we would write:

"Julie shakes her head: no."

Or:

"Julie shakes her head."

Or maybe:

"Julie signals no."
"Julie gestures no."

Or, without having to be specific:

"Julie still isn't convinced."


22.

Don't bother to complete a thought when you know the reader will complete it for you.  We already set up what's happening, that the girls are switching carriages.


23.

"Standing as if she's hanging."  I understand what that means, but it's an awkward way to say it.

"Chris dangles from the hand-straps."

Or:

"Chris hangs torpidly from the hand-straps."

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NOTES

24.

Classic case of doing only enough to move things along.  "Julie enters her building."  That's the only action here.  Don't waste another word on it.  We said already in the slug this is Julie's building.  There's no confusion about the "in" in "Julie goes in."

Also: a case where a vanilla "goes" is exactly the right choice.


25.

Revision:

"Julie kisses her.  On the way to the kitchen, Julie passes a portrait of herself and older brother ROB, and a framed picture of their father in police uniform."


26.

Revision:

"Julie finishes her home-cooked dinner while scrolling through Tumblr.  Lets out a laugh here and there."

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NOTES

27.

Nailed it.  Good job.

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NOTES

28.

Have Julie waiting.  We don't need to see every beat, every entry and exit -- unless it informs the story in some way.

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NOTES

29.

Odd.  So, he's unconvinced by her ID, but he lets her in anyway?  Why?  Is he terrible at his job?  Does he just not care?  It's no fun when the gatekeeper (threshold guardian) lets our protagonist through unchallenged.  Fuck that.  Let me have a go.

-----
Big Bouncer studies her ID, then Julie, then her ID.  He could not be more dubious.

BIG BOUNCER: Guess what?

JULIE: (bracing) Uh, mmmm?

BIG BOUNCER: I got a baby sister just like you.  Same guilty look and everything... Alright.  Stay out of trouble and have fun, kid.
-----

And there we go.  We understand how she got by him with that obviously fake ID.  We turned a meaningless moment into something meaningful: the bouncer has a younger sis who looks like Julie, and instinctively he feels a little protective of her.  "Stay out of trouble, kid."  Suddenly we've got the seed of a relationship, and stories are ALL about the character relationships.  We might use that later, have Big Bouncer pull her out of a bad situation or something.  Nurture that relationship, see where it goes.  Or not.

(I realize screwing around with characters like this might be wrecking the story the author wanted to tell.  I'll probably keep doing it anyway.  Meddling in other people's stories is something I can't easily switch off.)


30.

This paragraph is a bit messy ("further in... further inside"), but no matter because we can strip it down to its core function: Lola leading Julie deep into the NEW WORLD.


31.

Crossing the threshold should be momentous for Julie.  Right now it reads kinda ho-hum, no big deal.  Let's goose it with some evocative word choices.

-----
Lola grabs Julie's hand and takes her --

DEEPER INSIDE

into a NEW WORLD of brutal club beats and slashing, swirling lights.  Of slick, rugged men and polished, perfect women.

QUICK INSERTS

- Partying. Drinking. Lights. Color. Sound.
- A near naked girl dances in a mini cage
- Bartender expertly pours a drink
- Sparklers in bottles on trays carried by sexy service girls

Eyes on Julie as she navigates this writhing jungle.
-----

(https://10ptt.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/seventeen-by-m84-10.png)

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NOTES

32.

It irked me to learn what the men wear before we're informed they're on motorcycles.  Sure, "no helmets" telegraphs the fact.  It still bothers me.  So I'm going to play with the order, see if a new arrangement satisfies my persnickety tastes.

Heads-up: I'm going to expand the description of the four riders.  As written, only three of the four riders gets a mention.  That felt incomplete to me.

-----
Four SUPERMOTO BIKES soar along the highway, each a different color, each decorated, gleaming and BEAUTIFUL.

Riding: FOUR YOUNG MEN, stylishly dressed, no helmets but faces obscured.

-- One smoothly rides hands free (cruise control), leaning to steer
-- Another in a crouch, boots on the seat
-- The third whipping his legs from side to side like a stunt horseman.

Suddenly all throttle up and POP WHEELIES, effortlessly finding that narrow gap between balance and control, speed and suicide.

From behind and between them the fourth rider STREAKS AHEAD to take up lead position.

New York is their backdrop as they freestyle adjacent to the black, mirror-like Hudson river.
-----

My revision consumes about ten more words over the original.  Further revisions might bring them on par, but let's move on.


33.

A specific mini-slug came to mind while reading this scene:

-----
Behind the club, the four supermotos pull to a stop.  The young riders strip off their leathers, exposing intricate tattoos.

WITH THE BIKERS

as they bypass the line of people, Big Bouncer unhooks the rope, and we ENTER.

INSIDE

Pink and blue strobe lights cut across their faces, giving us our first look at the bikers.
-----

There something about the "WITH THE BIKERS" mini-slug I really love.  It feels more alive, more brash than the perfunctory "We follow the bikers..."  For me it just fits.


34.

"walks like a young Scarface."  Simple and effective.  Good job.

I like too the parallel construction introducing Cabo and Chino: red light for Cabo, blue and pink for Chino.  Both descriptions pop nicely and draw you into this scene.

Javi and Boogs -- it's all fucking great.  My favorite patch of writing so far.

Okay.  We reached page 10.  Do we go into overtime?

Hells yeah we do.  A little late to the party, but our inciting incident just swaggered in the door.  We don't quit until this thing plays out in full.

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NOTES

35.

"Flying sea" is a strange figurative combo.  Seas don't fly, not even metaphorically -- except perhaps in a Terry Gilliam film. "A sea of sparklers," okay, sure, spot on.  But not a "flying sea."  What can we substitute?  Cloud?  Storm?  Swarm?

-----
FURTHER INSIDE

Music THUMPS.

A SWARM OF HISSING SPARKLERS

carried to us by eight provocative Latin girls. They hold the champagne and vodka bottles high in the air for all to see.
-----

Note too, "a sea of flickering sparklers are carried to us..." is wrong re subject-verb agreement.  How many seas are being carried to us?  One.  How many sparklers?  Many, but "sea" is the thing linked to "carried," not "sparklers."

Think of it this way: a crate of bottles.  You wouldn't say "A crate of bottles are carried to us..."  You'd say "A crate of bottles is carried to us."  Because crate is singular, no matter how many items it contains.


36.

What's a verb that means something "spread around" something else? Off the top of my head:

circle
surround
ring
flank
border
hem
enclose
enfold

We've got more slightly jarring repetition here, with "VIP sections."  My gut feeling is to combine these two sentences, to kill two birds (repetition, passive verb) with one stone:

-----
Around the dance floor, flamboyant patrons at crowded VIP tables drink and celebrate.
-----

Which lets me mention my favorite writing axiom: As a general rule, orient the reader in time and space at the beginning of your sentence.  Spatial and temporal cues anchor the reader and give them solid ground to build on.

Sometimes you'll want to reverse it for dramatic effect -- say, if you want to disorient or shock your reader.  Most of the time stick to the rule and your writing will be clear and intelligible right from the first draft.


37.

The bridge between the first two sentences is the contrasting of Julie and Lola's behaviour.  I don't think the contrast is sharp enough, as written.  Seems to me, Lola is not just "a lot looser"; she's completely at ease.  This is not new territory for her.

-----
Julie bops her head to the MUSIC, too hyperconscious to let loose.  Lola, totally at ease, talks and laughs with Junior and Michael.  All hold drinks except Julie.
-----


38.  The subtle voodoo of LATER.

There's been a time cut.  Julie was alone;  Lola was talking with Junior and Michael;  now, Julie and Lola are dancing together.  We should bridge that time jump somehow.  It's not a big deal in this case, because it's not unclear what's happening.  But let's go through the analysis anyway.

The first approach is to fully re-slug:

-----
All hold drinks except Julie.

INT. CLUB SILHOUETTE - DANCE FLOOR

Julie dances with Lola.
-----

But that's overkill.  We haven't changed locations.  We only skipped ahead a few minutes.

The next way to handle it would be a scene transition:

-----
All hold drinks except Julie.

                    CUT TO:

DANCE FLOOR

Julie dances with Lola.
-----

This makes it very clear what's happening.  In a pre-production draft we don't need these formal CUT TOs except where they resolve ambiguity or they help smooth a transition -- like here.

But it swallows a couple extra lines.  That feels kind of wasteful.  And anyway, don't we get exactly the same result from:

-----
All hold drinks except Julie.

DANCE FLOOR - LATER

Julie dances with Lola.
-----

Yeah, we do.  With no extra whitespace cost.


39.

We can kill the parentheticals by fulfilling their purpose in the description.

-----
Lola, drunk now, dances with Julie until Junior pulls Lola away.  As she goes, Lola mouths to Julie, all voices crushed to silence by the concussive music:

LOLA: Dance with Michael!

JULIE: Gonna get a drink!

LOLA: Okay!
-----

There.  Zero wrylies.  We saved three whole lines of whitespace at the cost of one extra over the original text, for a net saving of two.


40.

"VIP table" feels more descriptive to me.  "Section" doesn't conjure any concrete imagery.  With "VIP table" I imagine patrons clustered around it, that little table slick and brimming with shot glasses and party detritus.

(https://10ptt.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/seventeen-by-m84-12.png)

---

NOTES

41.

Rob's intro.  This is Julie's brother.  We saw a framed picture of him in the scene with Julie at home with her mom.  So we already know who he is.

Or do we?

Here's the description from the Julie/mom scene (my revision of same):

-----
Julie kisses her.  On the way to the kitchen, Julie passes a portrait of herself and older brother ROB, and a framed picture of their father in police uniform.
-----

Okay.  Except for one thing: how old are Julie and Rob in that portrait?  This is important, because how Rob's club intro plays out depends entirely on this glimpsed portrait.

Was the portrait taken when they were kids?  Or was it shot not too many years ago, and we easily identify Julie and Rob from that framed portrait?

If the former, we (the movie audience) do not know who Rob is when we see him at the club bar.  If the portrait is recent then of course we know who he is when first we see him at the bar.

Out of those two scenarios, the most dramatic tension comes from us knowing in advance who Rob is.  Otherwise when we see him he's nobody in particular and therefore unworthy of our empathy.

So, it's important to go back to that Julie/Mom scene and clear up the ambiguity created by the vague portrait description.


42.

"He turns to the crowd."  Here's a good example of micro-managing your description.

If movies are life with the boring bits cut out then screenplays are novels with the boring bits cut out.  You don't have the pages to detail every action every character performs.  You're holding a paintbrush, not a calligraphy pen.

Must we be told Rob "turns" in order to observe the crowd?  No.  We intuit it.  He's facing the bartender.  To face the crowd he turns.  It's there already in the context.

I'm picking on a trivial example.  Nonetheless, it's something screenwriters should watch for.  Are you writing stuff the reader understands already?  Then hit that backspace key.  Save a word here, a word there.  Every word saved contributes to a cleaner, leaner read.


43.

"LONER, a rugged, jaded, criminal looking, with a heavy stack of..."

I love the "He's gonna be trouble" line, but that earlier sentence does not parse nicely.  Try:

-----
NEAR HIM

Also eyeing the club: a brutish, felonious LONER draped in religious beaded necklaces.

He's not enjoying himself.  His eyes fixate on Cabo's table.

Trouble's coming.
-----

(https://10ptt.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/seventeen-by-m84-13.png)

---

NOTES

44.

Nothing wrong with "BACK AT CABO'S SECTION" other than my penchant for brevity and my dislike for the word "section" over "table."

In this mini-slug we simply don't need to spell it out in full.  We have the preceding very natural match cut of "His eyes fixate on Cabo's section."  There's no friction to overcome.  BACK TO CABO.


45.

"Javi talks to one of the bottle girls.  Boogs has his arm around a girl."

For me, these sentences clash, because they both end with "girls/girl."  It feels clumsy.  I'm not entirely happy with my revision, but at least it eliminates the clash:

"Javi talks to a bottle girl.  Boogs has his arm around another."

I couldn't quickly find a smooth arrangement that left one of these girls a bottle-service girl and the other not.  It was easier to make them both bottle service girls or both not bottle service girls.

Could simplify to:

"Javi and Boogs flirt with the bottle girls."


46.  DA FUQ??

Whoa, whiplash!  We had this same brief scene two pages ago!  Only difference is Lola's line: "Dance with Michael!" / "Dance with Omar!"

Da fuq is going on here?  Are we playing the repetition for laughs?  Given the identical description wording, I'd say not.  Looks like an editing error, a duplication left over from an earlier draft.  We'll have to wait until the author explains herself/himself.


47.

Ah, okay.  "They don't see each other."  So, we're supposed to know they're brother and sister.  Therefore, the portrait in the earlier scene didn't depict them as children.  The portrait set up this moment so we would recognise Rob at the bar.  Coolio.  That earlier portrait scene still needs fixing, though.


48.

This little sequence is as indulgent as it is awesome.  We're talking at most five seconds of screen time, 1/12 of a page, so five lines max.  Yet we've got 16 lines -- not counting whitespace -- devoted to this moment.

I hesitate to revise, because I LOVE my slow-mo shots and my character moments.  Go read my 10PTT (http://10ptt.com/smf/index.php?topic=293.0) for Trevor Mayes's 23 MINUTES if you dare -- a screenplay/movie told entirely in slow motion.  (Possibly no longer true, if what I'm hearing about later drafts is true.  I weep for the loss of what might have been a revoluntionary piece of cinema.  On the other hand, I understand the impossible challenge a pure slow-mo approach presents.)

You're here for the rewriting so, putting my reluctance aside, rewrite we shall.

-----
Chino stalks by her.  Julie catches his gaze.

TIME SLOWS as:

They LOCK EYES.

MUSIC turning glacial along with time.  The background fuzzes into a dream-like haze.

CHINO'S EYES

alluring and terrifying.

JULIE

Frozen.  No breath.  No heartbeat.

THE WORLD

Frozen.  No sound.  No movement.  ANNIHILATION.

CHINO

smiles.

JULIE

smiles.

CHINO

walks away, eyes locked on her.

JULIE

unable to break free until --

CHINO

glances away and --

TIME catches up and --
SOUND pours in, loud and chaotic.
-----

Goddammit.  That took 22 lines sans whitespace. I blew past the author's original line count by six.  GODDAMMIT!  But slow-mo is so much fun!

Okay, okay.  Funtime's over.  Kill your darlings.

-----
Chino stalks by her.  Julie catches his gaze and

TIME SLOWS as they LOCK EYES.  Music turns glacial along with time.  The background fuzzes into a dream-like haze.

CHINO'S EYES -- alluring and terrifying.

JULIE -- frozen.  No breath.  No heartbeat.

THE WORLD -- frozen.  No sound.  No movement.  ANNIHILATION.

CHINO... smiles.

JULIE... smiles.

CHINO walks away, eyes locked on her, Julie unable to break free until --

CHINO glances away and -- TIME catches up and -- SOUND pours in, loud and chaotic.
-----

There we go.  Down to about 10 lines, excluding whitespace.  We knocked it down by just over a third.  That'll do, pig.  That'll do.

(https://10ptt.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/seventeen-by-m84-14.png)

---

NOTES

49.

Unfortunately -- or, in this case, fortunately -- there's no avoiding a weapon onomatopoeia here.  GUNSHOT! GUNSHOT! will not do.  It reads as lamely as PEW! PEW!

We don't have a lot of options for handgun sounds, but we have enough to do the job.  Here's the short list of candidates pulled from my writing files:

BLAM! KER-BLAM! BOOM! CRACK! KA-POW! POW! POP!

Observe how these words start with a hard consonant to match the concussive punch of a gunshot.  Note too the single syllable in most cases.

"BLAM" I would think is most used.  Then maybe BOOM! and CRACK!  I chose POW! for its simplicity, even though it skates perilously close to the now ridiculed PEW! PEW!

My favorite sound effect in a screenplay is Jim Cameron's use of KA-CHAK! for the terminator doing those one-handed shotgun reloads.  A more perfect alignment of word and sound there has never been, IMO.

Hey, I want to try something here.  Just an idea that probably won't work.  But gotta try new things, right?  "You have to be willing to take those risks.  In whatever you are doing, failure is an option. But fear is not."  That's James Cameron again.  He's kind of a smart guy.  And fearless.

-----
ON LONER

making his way closer to:

CABO'S TABLE

The Loner approaches Cabo and --

pulls out a -- BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

AT THE BAR

Rob reacts to the shots --

THROUGHOUT CLUB

People SCREAM and PANIC.  The music dies.
-----

What do you think?  Does the truncated description with the gun heighten or harm the moment?  I love to find moments where you believe you can trust the reader, where you cross your fingers and pray the context is clear enough to have your reader finish the thought for you.


50.

No doubt there's a better word than "pry" but to me it conveys the right amount of forcefulness.  "Tries to get through" strikes me as lacking conviction.

(https://10ptt.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/seventeen-by-m84-15.png)

---

NOTES

[I see I missed another misspelling of JULIE top of this page.  Suggests M84's not using Movie Magic or Final Draft, where character name typos rarely slip through.]

51.

"Guides" is okay but, again, lacks conviction.  Rob's sole mission at this moment is to get his sister to safety -- and fast.  There'll be no gentle guiding.  "Yanks" connotes the same unrelenting grasp without stating "Rob doesn't let go of Julie."  Other strong verbs I considered: "tows", "hauls", "drags".  I figured "drag" to be a tad excessive, even in this situation.


52.

Didn't want to repeat "Loner" is all.


53.

LOL, this sentence is a clattering trainwreck -- but still delightful!  Because you feel the writer going flat out, exhausted and energized, trying to keep pace with the story spewing from their creative wellspring.  This kind of first draft writing makes me smile.  When a writer is in this enviable fugue state all is forgiven so long as they funnel that stream of images onto the page.  Capture first, clean later.

So, the first problem with the sentence is "them" and "they."  We must carefully manage reader focus during these fast action scenes.  That means careful placement of pronouns.  Use them only after establishing the nouns they replace.

In this instance, the pronouns stand for Rob and Julie, but it's not clear, because we didn't re-establish that we're back with those two.

-----
DANCE FLOOR

Near the exit, Rob and Julie get swept up in a wave of fleeing clubbers.  Rob takes a last hard look at Cabo's table, considers Julie, and decides.  His hand at her back:

ROB: Come on, let's go!
-----


END OF PAGE 15.

And we'll quit there.

Overall?  I like this story.  Not a lot happened, but I like what's there.  It feels like this could go places.

Problems?  Plenty.

Top of the list is structure.  Hook is the invitation to the party.  [CORRECTION!  The hook is the descent into NY streets and the attack on the street kids.  But it made so  little impression on me -- with its unremarkable, detached antagonist POV -- that I forgot all about it!]  Perhaps moving the supermoto biker intro to the front serves as a better hook.

Inciting incident is the attempted murder of Cabo.  All of this should fit into 12 pages-ish, ahead of a 1st Act turning point around p.24.  I can tell you the inciting incident ends on p.17.  That's far too indulgent.  In the next draft the writer should savagely trim these opening pages to reduce page count.  Brutal, but necessary.

Grammar, punctuation, typos -- standard problems afflicting early drafts.  A persistent disregard for the fundamentals marks any rookie screenwriter as someone who's arrogant, oblivious, or NFG (no fucks given).  If you're the first, your name better be Tarantino.  For the others, commit to improving your craft.  Keep three browser tabs open: dictionary.com, thesaurus.com, and google.com for researching grammar rules you don't understand.

And we're done here!

Thanks for reading.  Thanks to M84 for the pages.

Coming soon: a different kind of 10PTT starring two drafts of the same iconic movie.

Thank you Pitchpatch for taking the time to analyze my 15 pages!! Very helpful stuff here! Great lessons in structure and formatting along with insight on how a reader would interpret these pages. Again, thanks! (excuse grammar I'm going to free-write this)

I have already begun updating scenes and writing notes on possible structural fixes. Ex. To address the Rob(Julie's brother) intro issue - I'm thinking of adding a line of dialogue on page 6 when Julie walks into her apt.. like have the mother say "Your brother passed by and asked for you" then have Julie roll her eyes or something.

I'm also thinking of adding the aftermath of the opening flyby attack- show the bloody crime scene and have Rob investigate. Probably pop this scene in before Julie goes out to the club.
I.e. Police yellow tape. Red and blue lights from parked cop cars. Introduce Rob as he investigates bloody aftermath etc...

This would potentially fix Rob's intro, support the hook, and up the stakes early... Cop lights might serve as a "visual flourish" since Red/Blue/Pink Lights bounce off our 4 dirt bike riders when they enter the club a few scenes later.
 
**Just an Idea, I'll have to weight this scene out against the rest of the script to see if it works.**

--------

The picture you added! (for pages 4,6, and 7) Yes x1,000,000! It's like you picked those images off my brain. ( I guess that's what a screenwriter feels like when they see their movie properly made)

-----
Regarding revisions:
Page 1- Yes! I love the rewrite/reformatting it reads a lot better. This is definitely a keeper, minus a few changes I'll likely make. I did want to "misdirect" the audience a bit and play off the usual "city skyline establishing shot" thing to then reveal it's a living POV shot. As you said I have to articulate that on the page.

Page 13 (note 48)
Wowww absolutely love this revision. I love the way this reads. I'm talking about the "22 lines sans white space" version. I think this is a moment where we should indulge and take as much space (time) as needed. This works really well.

---

I'll try to add more comments soon! Again, this feedback has been invaluable.Thanks Pitchpatch! The first 15 pages came back from the torture test literally red and blue... bloodied and bruised. But as they say, "That which does not kill us..."  


(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pSW2FDXuFe4/maxresdefault.jpg)

Hey there, M84.

Thanks for the feedback on my feedback.  (Got ourselves a classic feedback loop.)

Great to hear you've got (a) no ragrets, and (b) fresh ideas cooking.  It's a real thrill for me to watch writers conceive a scene and watch them nurture it through to maturity.

What I like most about these 10PTTs -- and revision writing in general -- is the puzzle aspect.  It's like Scrabble.  In this case, there's a sentence with words expressing an idea, and you score on how vivid, clear, and memorable the idea is.  Say you read a sentence and you score it a 26.  It's an okay score.  No one will fault you if you settle for 26.  But what if, after more careful consideration and experimentation, you see another configuration yielding a better score?  What if there's a 38 waiting for you, if you're willing to put in the extra effort?

For me, that's how the process feels.  (The irony for rewriting is, longer isn't necessarily better; discarding words usually gets you a higher readability score.)  I'll always want the 38.  I don't care if it's in my writing or another's.  That 26 won't do if I smell a 38 waiting around the corner.

Sometimes I know how to nudge a sentence closer to 38.  Sometimes I don't.  So long as that sentence reaches 38 -- by my hand or yours -- I can rest easy.  Well, at least rest momentarily.  Because there's always the next sentence.  And the next.

So, yeah.  Your pages took some hits, bounced off the ropes, but they stood their ground.

I didn't escape unscathed.  I never do.  I beat myself up doing these 10PTTs.  The conceit of it, the arrogance, the self-importance.  The audacity of meddling with another writer's words.  What gives me the right?  What do I presume to know over others?  By what yardstick do I claim to know better?  It feels shameful at times.  What do I know, really?

I know something.  I know a 38 disguised as a 26 when I see it.  I know when I see that shit going down, imma take a running tackle at you, 26.  You'll go down a 26, but you'll get up as a 38.

Rewriting, folks.  It's a strange, wonderful game.