10PTT: Full Moon by Dylan DiMaggio & Greg Nix

[Pitchpatch]

FULL MOON by Dylan DiMaggio & Greg Nix

Usual disclaimer: This is an early draft script.  The authors graciously granted me permission to stomp my muddy boots all over it.  It's likely I misinterpreted some stuff.  It's very likely I butchered some innocent sentences.  Sorry about that.  But hopefully I discuss some stuff that makes good sense and helps you (and me) be better writers.

My revisions are founded on general writing principles in some places and personal preference in others.  There's no right and wrong way, only what works for you.

The dialogue is untouched.  I'm scrutinizing action blocks only.

GREEN is for active verbs.  YELLOW is for figurative language.

The current script title is FULL MOON.  That's an okay title, but I'm stupidly fond of what it was before it got its name:

UNTITLED WEREWOLF ON THE MOON PROJECT

That working title, my friends, is Fifty Fucking Shades of Awesome.

[Pitchpatch]

PAGE 1

1.

We're in good hands.  Dylan and Greg know how to build mood fast with simple pen strokes.  You always know by Page 2 if the writer can write.  Sometimes you know by the first paragraph.

I'm getting that sinking, excited, disappointed, happy feeling that announces I'll be a bystander for most of this 10PTT.  It's kind of a bummer.  I like to play the hero.  I like to rescue oppressed ideas and weak images from their shackles on the page.  When I know right away the writing is good, that I should get the hell out of its way, I do feel a bit redundant.

This first establishing paragraph sets the scene well.  It's entirely visual though.  Well, no, it's tactile too: "muggy... thick with moisture... crushes..."  What does a Florida night sound like?  I don't know.  Do the frogs call?  Do the crickets sing?  Do trains clatter by in the gloom?

Anything on the page beyond what's there now is gravy.  The paragraph does the job.  You wouldn't want to pad it and eat up more white space for no good reason.  But maybe we can tease our auditory sense, pull in the reader just that tiny bit more...

-----
Neat rows of upscale condos stand quiet in the hot Florida night.  Frogs croak.  Air thick and moist crushes the sodium-yellow street lights to a golden haze.
-----

Those little tweaks:

- "look peaceful" -> "stand quiet."  The first has the condos being acted upon: we're observing them.  The second is the condos being active -- a subtle difference that shifts the tone.  Both work.  Choose your weapon.

- "muggy Florida night" -> "hot Florida night."  We get "muggy" from the "thick" and "moist" air in the next sentence.  Where possible, don't double up on description.  Instead, I figured we could emphasize the heat, really drive it home: "hot, thick, moist" versus "muggy, thick, moist".   For me, the former avoids the overlapping adjectives in the latter.  Each adjective is discreet, each adds something.

- "Frogs croak."  I searched and searched for a non-cliche, clean way of saying the same thing.  I found nothing as brief and effective as this two-word cliche.  Sometimes you have to give up and embrace the cruel efficiency of cliches.

- "Air thick and moist crushes the sodium-yellow street lights to a golden haze." The changes to this second sentence are trivial and might even rob it of some cadence.  I'm undecided.  By cutting "the" we eliminate the comma partitions.  And I shortened "into".  Does any of this streamline the sentence?   It's so minor.  Hard to tell.  Like watching a feather land on mousetrap: waiting for the snap.  I can tell you we've jettisoned three syllables, so there's that.  Less syllables means a smoother, slicker read.  (Are you sensing it yet?  My dignity draining away, comment by comment.  I can feel it.  No question about it.  I'm afraid.  Stop, Dave.  I'm afraid...)


2.

This is good, solid writing.  If I were to indulge my urge to nudge the amperage from 10 to 10.5 -- let's not go all crazy-11 on the dial just yet -- it would be this:  The girl wears pajamas, eats ice cream, shops online.  Is it possible we can bring some color to how she wears, how she eats, how she shops?  How does one portray "shy and sweet" with these activities?  Okay, with "sweet" the actress can sell it with wardrobe and mannerisms.  But "shy"?  Who's she being shy for?   People grow shy when they're self-conscious.  People usually aren't self-conscious when they're alone.  So I'm thinking: let it play.  We don't need a sign around her neck announcing "Hello.  I am sweet and shy."  Let her words and actions reveal it.

Look, I know.  We get what "shy and sweet" means, both on the page and on screen.  All crew departments will deliver the visual cues without breaking a sweat.  We'll see her hair tied up.  Her face make-up free.  Her movements will be light and bouncy, her expression pleasant.  The cinema machine knows down to the last freckle how to give the audience "sweet and shy."

But that's the crew.  That's another day.  What about here, now, on the page for the reader?  Can't we toss the reader a little somethin' somethin' to feed their imagination?

-----
A girl (25) in cartoon-print pajamas spoons ice cream and shops for skis on eBay.
-----

That's 27 words down to 15.  And quite likely this will fit on a single line, saving two.  We've condensed all the necessary info, transformed the paragraph from noisy shotgun blast to whisper-smooth sniper bullet.  (ORLY, Pitchpatch?  Yes, I'm being ridiculous.  You don't come here much, do you?)  Adding the "cartoon-print pajamas" hopefully ups the cute factor.  I'm tempted to go further: "... in oversized cartoon-print pajamas..."  Those too-long sleeve cuffs flopping about when not forcibly pushed up past her wrists.  Adorable.  The shyness will have to come out in a later scene.

With "shops for skis on eBay" we directed without directing.  We know there'll be an insert shot showing the laptop/tablet browser open at eBay.   A long form way of writing this on the page would be:

-----
A girl (25) in cartoon-print pajamas spoons ice cream and shops online.

HER WEB BROWSER

displays an eBay listing for expensive snow skis.
-----

There are more ways to handle it, but none as streamlined as "shops for skis on eBay."

See?  I'm reduced to this when writers deliver pages with ease.  I end up the hysterical one snatching every little crumb.  There will be no dignity in this 10PTT, I assure you.  Not for me.  I'll be forced to do things, say things... things a self-respecting man should never say.  Things you won't ever erase from memory.  Oh, but you'll try.  You'll wish this place we're going had a delete button.  That click you heard was the central locking.  The doors and windows are now secure.  I wouldn't want any accidents along the way if, say, somebody got the idea to throw themselves out of a moving vehicle.

All right.  We're gassed up and ready to go.  Let's inch forward...


3.

"Pre-furnished" modifies "corporate apartment", so there's no comma.  Apply the standard test, substituting "and" for the comma: corporate and pre-furnished apartment; pre-furnished and corporate apartment.  Neither reads sensibly.  Compare to the properly comma-spliced "clean, generic sitting area": clean and generic sitting area; generic and clean sitting area.  No problem there.


4.

Is it important we see her glance at the TV screen?  I don't think so.  We're told she's barely paying attention, which means she's not totally ignoring it.  The quick glances are implied.  If this particular glance -- just before she mutes the sound -- is important, give us some indication on the page:

-----
Her cell phone BUZZES on the coffee table.  She's slow to pick up, suddenly giving the TV her full attention.  Something about a "brutal killing"...?
-----

That glance can't be cut.  It's a character moment.  It tells us something.  Suddenly the TV report resonates with her.  Something triggers in her head to make her pay attention.

But, as it exists on the page now, I reckon that glance means nothing.  She mutes the TV with the same general indifference she's demonstrated til now.  Cut the glance and save words.


5.

This is me being brutal.  I have this thing -- did you notice? -- about rescuing orphan words from run-over lines.  Um, perhaps "rescue" isn't the right word here.  Perhaps "exterminate" is.

I warned you: when it comes to words on the page, I'm ruthless.  I concede, killing orphans sounds like the worst kind of mustache-twirling villainy.  But consider this.  The great writer William Faulkner solemnly urged us to kill our darlings.  It's a small stretch to argue that category includes orphans.  If you want to argue, go ahead.  Me?  I don't fuck with Faulkner.

Here's my reasoning.  A line that runs over by one or two words doesn't have the smooth left-right reading sweep of a sentence or paragraph occupying a single line on  the page.  With a single line of text you get everything in one sweep of the eye: one brain bite.  You arrive at the right-hand margin, you digest your line of text, the narrative grows.  Your gaze resets to the left margin, and you're ready for more.  One bite, one swallow.

When a single line extends to two, with only one or two words dangling beneath, you're not done when your eye reaches the right margin after that first line.  You put your comprehension on hold.  There's more waiting.  You can't start chewing until you've slurped up the entire strand of spaghetti.  The narrative stays suspended until you've ingested those final few words.  So, your gaze zips back to the left margin, you finish the paragraph, and now you're ready to make sense of this text block.  Your brain slips into gear, processes the narrative, and you're ready for the next line.  But that extra bit of arrested comprehension makes a subtle difference to how a script reads.  Those tiny narrative speed bumps accumulate and take their toll.  Hey, and we haven't even talked about the benefits of saving whitespace when you doggedly hunt down danglers.

You may ask: What about a paragraph that overruns by half a line?  Is that equally sinful?  No.  Halfway between good and evil is... meh.  As I see it, the "Kill Your Orphans" rule applies only to a last line comprising one or two short words.  If the last line is any longer it won't be easy to trim the paragraph enough to pull in the danglers.


6.

We've got two unnamed women interacting.  I'm itching to give "the girl" a tag.  Maybe "Pajama Girl" or short-form it to "Pajamas" or even "PJs".

I swapped in "frowns" for "looks" to show Pajama Girl's state of mind.  "Looks" always feels to me like an opportunity to do some coloring between the lines.  On film it would be: close on browser window, new high bid pops up, back to Pajama Girl's annoyed face.  So, why not include that on the page?

"She's not the top bid anymore." -> "She just got outbid."   Stay frosty for opportunities to say the same thing with less words -- unless trimming messes up an awesomely written sentence.  Don't be fanatically spartan just for the hell of it.

[Pitchpatch]

PAGE 2

7.

Personal taste.  If somebody were telling me this story orally, that's how I'd expect to hear it.


8.

Call me slow, but initially I thought "(eyes on the prize)" related to what she says: "Somebody has to be."  Then came the uh-huh moment of, Oh, the eBay auction is the prize.  It's a cute wryly.  But, me, I'd keep things crystal clear when cute has the potential to derail comprehension:  "(eyeing the timer)"


9.

That's a suspiciously wide parenthetical y'all got there.  Somebody's been a-cheatin' the ol' format.    Take a hard look at long wrylies.   They interrupt flow.  Usually for good reason, but they do interrupt.  So keep them super short.  I'd go for "(to someone else)" or maybe the simple 2+2 choice of "(distracted)".


10.

"The CLICK of the other line cuts her off."  Just pausing to point out the nicely active sentence construction.  Not: "She's cut off by the CLICK of the other line."


11.

Shave off those two words.  We understand just as well with them gone.  When you cut needless words, you win.  Remember that famous quote from the bard: "First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the woman."  Shakespeare knew a thing or two about priorities.  And cocaine.

[Pitchpatch]

PAGE 3

12.

"Behind her, motion-sensing lights illuminate a small backyard."  Okay, we have an ambiguity problem here.  If you stop there and read no further, riddle me this: have the lights been on the whole time or have they suddenly activated now?  Your answer doesn't matter; you're correct either way.  The problem is "illuminate", because it carries both meanings.  We need to pin down its superposition to avoid leading the reader astray.  Yes, we understand these are motion-sensing lights, so they remain off until triggered by movement.  Is it possible the lights have been on for minutes already?  Yes.  The way it's written makes it a valid interpretation.

I believe the intent is for the motion lights to blink on.  And there we go: "blink" is a great candidate to replace the ambiguous "illuminate".  Let's try it:

"Behind her, motion-sensing lights blink on, flooding a small backyard."

Or keep "illuminate":  "... motion-sensing lights wink on, illuminating a small backyard."


13.

I'm gonna point and shame this sentence: "She turns, then gets up and heads to the sliding glass door to investigate."

That's how we all write in an early draft or two, isn't it?  In those early drafts we transcribe from our imagination in excruciating detail.  Later, we realize all we need is:

"She opens the glass sliding door to investigate."

Implied in that action is: she turns, gets up, crosses the room to the door.  There's no opening that door without doing those mini actions.  If we can safely imply the in-between parts, the way an animator keyframes the important moments in a cartoon, then by all means let's do it, proving the rule "less is more."

Thinking on it more, it wouldn't surprise me if an editor chopped it down to this:

1. WIDE: Pajama Girl FG; security light come on illuminating yard in BG.
2. CLOSE on Pajama Girl: her reaction.
3. CUT TO: Pajama Girl at glass door, cautiously sliding it open.

That little on-screen time cut between 2 and 3 keeps a healthy pace.  ("What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out.")  It doesn't hurt to shoot it continuously, and maybe the director likes something about the way Pajama Girl moves from the couch to the door.  But my money's on the editor scissoring it.

FREEZE FRAME!  (Or freeze page or whatever.)  There's something missing here!  Describe to me, right now, Pajama Girl's attitude as she walks to the door then out onto the porch.

Again, anything you say is valid, because we don't have her attitude baked into the action.  We can make some reasonable assumptions, of course.  We're not idiots here -- although I play one on TV and in various internet forums.

We don't wait long before her demeanor reveals itself -- "She takes a few tentative steps into the yard" -- confirming what we already suspect: she's rattled.  The movie audience would see this emotion on her face and in her body language soon as those security lights snap on outside and she decides to investigate.  Why make the script-reader wait?

"She tentatively opens the sliding glass door to investigate."  Now we're set.  One adverb colors all her actions from here on.

"She walks onto the porch."  Now we know enough to interpret that "walk" through the focused lens of "tentative".  But, hey, let's keep that momentum going:

-----
She tentatively opens the sliding glass door to investigate --

BACKYARD - CONTINUOUS

-- and creeps onto the porch.  Inside, the news rambles on.
-----

I could very well be screwing up this scene.  Maybe the writers wanted her to be cautious but in control, not timid and jumpy.  The possibility is duly noted.


14.

"She turns fast..."  We can try out some fitter verbs to do the job of "turns fast": spins, whirls, reels, wheels, pivots...  All of these do a great job describing "turns fast."

"... but doesn't see anything" i.e. "does not see anything."  That could slim down to: "She whirls, but sees nothing."


15.

"Hello?"  A LOUD CLATTER.

The noise is her answer.  Action, reaction.  This is a suspenseful scene.  Keep the sentences quick and punchy, like Pajama Girl's racing heartbeat.


16.

I wanted to be a dick and say, "Is it true the motion detector turns off?  No, it's not true.  Not really.  What turns off is the light attached to the motion detector.  The light turns off when the timer keeping it on runs out.  The motion sensor stays on constantly, whether the light is on or off."  See?  Dick.

Then I realized the joke's on me.  As described, the motion sensor DOES turn off.  Because somebody disables it.  The proof comes moments later when Pajama Girl flails her arms trying to coax the light back on and nothing happens.  (EDIT: Nope, the security light ain't broke, because it comes on again at scene end.  So I have no idea why it doesn't trigger when she waves her arms.)

Nothing at all wrong with this paragraph, but it can be condensed.  How about 20 words down to 15.  In particular:

"... but it doesn't turn back on"  versus "... but it stays off."

That's a good example of finding a shorter way to say the same thing.  Like I've said in other 10PTTs, words are free but they have a cost.  (Saywhatnow?)  The price is comprehension.  Every unnecessary word inflates the time it takes for your reader to digest your spoonfuls (sentences) of story.  Yeah, we're talking nano- and micro-seconds.  The speed of thought.  Ridiculously tiny the mental pauses may be, they add up across the pages.  So keep it slim, Jim.  (My dignity needle just dipped into the red.  But screw you.  Still some reserves left in the tank.  I think.  Hope that gauge isn't faulty.)


17.

I tend to be all "You kids get off my lawn" crotchety when it comes to action busywork like pulling phones out of pockets.

"She digs out her phone to use its flashlight, then stumbles for the door."

BOOM!  Drop the mic, we're done here.  Skip over as much boring busywork as you can, so long as the context adequately fills in the blanks.  That phone came from somewhere on her person.   We assume pocket.  To use the flashlight feature she has to switch it on first.  All of this is 2+2 instead of 2+2=4.


18.

With a flick of the scalpel we nip and tuck, and a two-liner becomes a one-liner.

A very minor observation: the simplest word forms are easiest to read and quickest to comprehend.  Case in point:

"She yelps, dropping her phone."
"She yelps, drops her phone."

I'd argue the latter has a stronger cause-effect feel.  You could argue the yelp and phone drop are simultaneous, so "dropping" is required.  That's fine by me.  Just something to consider.  You'll come across stronger cases.


19.

The revision: "Behind her a shadow rises.  In the phone's glow, two large yellow eyes burn in the night."

What is a "shadowy shape"?  If we don't describe the shape then it's no more than an amorphous shadow.  I feel we need to lose one or the other:

"Behind her a shadow rises." (shape gone)
"Behind her a monstrous shape rises." (shadow gone)

"Burning hot in the night" works.  But I notice "burning" and "hot" share a big chunk of Venn Diagram.  I'd argue "hot" is expendable.  More than that, I'd argue "hot" hurts the sentence by freeloading.


20.

I'm puzzled how this plays out.  Is it a slow, dawning turn to face the beast, or is it a whirl?  I suppose it's up to us to imagine it.  A slow turn and then the blown-out silhouette of the attacker when the security lights blast on -- that works.  Sensing the towering evil, she whips around to face the harsh bloom of the floodlights and the hulking beast, all in a split second -- that works pretty great too.  But if we have to pick the blocking ourselves, that means the author's hands are off the steering wheel.  That's not good.

Let me have a crack at both versions.

"She turns slowly, inevitably around.  The motion light triggers.  She's trapped in the shadow of her worst nightmare."

Next, let's go with the sudden turn.

"She whirls to confront it.  The motion light SNAPS ON. Her pupils pinhole then go WIDE WITH SHOCK."

Oooh, snuck in a camera direction there.  Nice.

Both are wordy compared to the one-line original.  I reckon the extra is totally worth it to really button that bit.  (A reminder again that I might be doing silly things to the scene, and the authors might be rolling their eyes in weary sufferance.)

[Pitchpatch]

PAGE 4

21.

We intuit she's a reporter.  "Our own Karen" plants that seed.  Similarly, the slug tells us we're at Kennedy Space Center.  A general "gates to NASA" gives us all we need.  I'm inclined to shorten "in front of" too.  Heck, let's go full monty on this sucker:

"KAREN stands outside the gates to NASA."

Compare to the original:

"KAREN, the local field reporter, stands in front of the gates to the NASA base."

The revision springboards off information already presented to us.  It wastes no time and no words.  It shouldn't: all we need is a simple lead-in to her report.


22.

"EARLIER" seems wrong here.  Technically, yes, the stuff we're about to see does take place "earlier".  But it misleads.  Without reading ahead, we might think this is a hard cut to a scene happening earlier in the story rather than a pre-recorded interview that's part of Karen's report.  So, why not go ahead and remove any confusion:

"INT. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER HALLWAY - PRE-RECORDED"

There's probably a better TV-production word for it, but it does the job. No chance of confusion now.


23.

"They work like a well-oiled machine."
"They are a well-oiled machine."

Tiny change, but I do like the no-nonsense, just-the-facts-ma'am feel of the revision.

[Pitchpatch]

PAGE 5

24.

Or "showboating", "grandstanding" etc.


25.

"... a DVR menu appears."
or
"... a DVR menu pops up."

Nothing more required.  It doesn't matter where the DVR menu pops up, just that it pops up to clue us in that we've transition to watching the report somewhere else.  Pick your word battles.  This isn't one of them.  When the words aren't important, do the least work possible.


26.

Amusing and effective slugline!


27.

Of course you knew I'd yank that orphan into line.  It's what I do.  It's ALL I do.

[Pitchpatch]

PAGE 6

All dialogue, so it's coffee time for me.

[Pitchpatch]

PAGE 7

28.

I dunno.  How effective is whispering when you're getting forcibly separated from those you're talking to?  More likely it would play like this:

-----
COOPER: But I want to lie now.

Young drags Cooper away, but Cooper's not done yet with the girls:

COOPER: I'll be back.  Don't you dare stop thinking about me.  Astronaut!
-----


29.

Me striving to eliminate the repetition of "table" and smooth out the flow.

[Pitchpatch]

PAGE 8

30.

Did we reel in a line?  By golly, I think we did.  High five!

[Pitchpatch]

PAGE 9

Nada.

[Pitchpatch]

PAGE 10

31.

Jus' fuck'n witcha.  Giving the sentence a little bump.  Mainly because I've been given nothing to do these past couple pages.  I go too long without redlining, I get a tiny bit twitchy, start fixing things that ain't broke.

[Pitchpatch]

CLOCKING SOME OVERTIME: PAGE 11

32.

"All of mission control seems squashed into this room managed by this man."

That there is a savage edit.  I think it's a good one.  "Condensed" still works well here, but, for my taste, "squashed" connotes elbow to elbow.  Packed to the gills.  I think that's what the writers were shooting for.


33.

It wasn't 100% clear who was turning their head.  Also, given there's only one (comfortable) way to wear a bluetooth earpiece, we can cut loose "his head" and let context dictate what's going on.

[Pitchpatch]

FUCK IT, WE'RE GOING TO PAGE 12!

Nothing to see here vis-a-vis revisions.  But I do like the tropey-but-fun hula girl bit.


FINAL COMMENTS

Greens and yellows... hmmm.  Kinda light on the greens (active verbs) and VERY light on the yellows (figurative language).  Never mind, the pages read pretty good anyway.  But more greens and yellows would really boost the writing along.

I'm curious to learn what's going on with EVE.  Presumably she gets moon-wolf chomped in that opening scene, and things get toothy (and furry) mid moon mission.  That premise has seriously cool possibilities.

Thanks again to Dylan and Greg for making this 10PTT happen.