The 10-Page Torture Test

The script for THE BUNKER (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252963/) (2001) popped up on Horror Screenplay Archive (http://horrorscreenplays.blogspot.com/2011/11/bunker-2001.html) and the cheesy poster caught my eye.  (If you'd prefer to pay for it, you can purchase a printed copy (http://purchase a printed copy) on eBay for $14.50. Notice the eBayer does not mention the author's name anywhere on that page. Classy, dude. Color me cynical.)

[EDIT: Author Clive Dawson (http://www.screenwriting.demon.co.uk/Clive%20Dawson%20Screenwriter.html) posted his script online here (http://www.screenwriting.demon.co.uk/Film_files/The%20Bunker.pdf)]

I figured I'd know by page one if this schlocked or rocked.  Turns out page one rocked.  Indeed the first ten rocked.


or, as described by The Horror Club (http://thehorrorclub.blogspot.com/2009/03/23-bunker-2001.html):


After watching the movie, I can tell you the second logline is the one I wish I'd seen.

Competent writing wasn't enough to get me motivated to 10PTT.  What really toasted my nuggets was watching the film they made from Clive's script -- the first ten pages, anyway.  That got me sufficiently angry to get my ass in the chair, get my sneer on, and get stabby-stabby on the keyboard. What they filmed did not please me. I'll just go ahead and assume Clive Dawson feels the same.  That would explain why after this movie he returned to TV for a full decade before trying features again (Last Days On Mars (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1709143/), 2012).

Two problems announced themselves right out of the gate: Nazi soldiers speaking British English, and where the hell did the terrific ambush prologue go!

War films can get away with Nazi characters speaking in non-German accents.  Let me qualify that: good war films get away with it.  I'm old fashioned.  Ja, I like mine Englisch-actor Nazis to sprechen Deutsch Englisch.  Your brain is less likely to say, "Waaait, why are all the Nazi's speaking English to each other" than "Whoa, why are all the Nazi's speaking British English." It helps with suspension of disbelief.

Why Nazis anyway?  Would anything be lost by switching sides?  Why not make the story about British soldiers fleeing the Germans, taking refuge in a British-controlled bunker?  That sidesteps the accent issue.  Probably make it more accessible to western audiences too.  Just saying.  Why German soldiers instead of British when the entire cast is British?

And the ambush prologue.  Spoiler alert: Pages 1–8 don't appear in the finished movie. At least not the cut I watched. However... "There is a pretty good gun battle early on but that's as close as it gets" says The Horror Enthusiast (http://www.thehorrorenthusiast.com/2008/10/bunker-dvd-review.html).  That makes me wonder if the opening ambush made it into other versions, and I was unlucky enough to get the neutered one.  Without that brutal five-minute prologue we meet the characters completely cold as they stumble through the forest toward the bunker.  The "ambush" they refer to may as well be a "dance-off with a rival street crew that turned ugly."  Without that prologue battle the movie feels cheap, and it never recovers.

For most of the movie my mind wandered back to all the glorious visual insanity oozing from Michael Mann's The Keep -- a vastly superior "evil in the tunnels" horror film in every way, even with its studio-inflicted flaws.

Let's get to it.


Annotation Legend

GREEN = active verbs and punchy stuff. Easy to see where the pace picks up and eases up.

PURPLE = passive construction. Not necessarily bad. Unless your page is awash in it. A little passive here and there can create a nice contrast, make your active sentences feel even punchier.

RED = possible edits for various reasons

CYAN = something's got me excited or appalled. Prepare to be lectured.

Longtime 10PTT survivors prisoners readers know I'm sensitive to passive sentences. Whenever I spot one I get an overwhelming urge to tip that lazy s.o.b. out of its hammock and chase it around back to go chop wood.  Something productive.

"is ----ing"
"is ----ed"
"are ----ing"
"is ---- by"

And all their mooching cousins spawned from the loins of Uncle NarratorVoice and Aunty TellDontShow.

Even if a passive sentence feels like it belongs on the page, I'll still do the mental exercise of flipping it over to active, just for fun.  Let's try that here.

-- "Rubble and wood and construction equipment are scattered around."

Our goal in this exercise is to remove the word 'are' and those like it. 'Are' is a benign-looking word. But what it's really doing is ever so slightly lulling your brain to sleep. If a dozen of these passive malingerers gather on a page you might actually nod off.  And while you slumber these miscreants will feast on your vitality and poison your mojo, and you should burn your toothbrush just in case.

We could go the sentence-fragment path:

"Rubble and wood and construction equipment all over."
"Rubble and wood and construction equipment everywhere."

We could merge the description into another sentence, to give it a more natural context:

"Two Organisation Todt guard work among the rubble and wood and construction equipment."

Or there's the simple change of:

"Rubble and wood and construction equipment lie scattered around."

-- "Dim work-lights are strung along the roof..."

"Dim work-lights loop along the roof..."
"Dim work-lights hang along the roof..."
"Dim work-lights snake along the roof..."
"Dim work-lights thread along the roof..."

Or, retaining 'strung' by switching word order:

"Work-lights strung from the roof pulse dimly..."

-- "Their noses and mouths are masked against the dust by grimy cotton scarves..."

"Grimy cotton scarves keep their noses and mouths dust free..."
"Grimy cotton scarves shield their noses and mouths against the dust..."
"They breathe heavily through grimy cotton scarves..."
"Grimy cotton scarves serve as dust-masks..."

So that's our passive-to-active exercise done, and now we're warmed up and ready to weed out the passives wherever they clump together on a page.  Moving along...

-- "At the junction of a dark side-tunnel..."

I think this sentence and the suggested edits exemplifies how trimming can improve comprehension and readability.  One thing good writers know is: less words is better.  It seems like a trivial thing, but less words means your brain processes those little squiggles into meaning a tiny bit quicker. Stephen King ruthlessly trims at least 10% off every page.  When you know what to look for, trimming isn't so tough.  Find a single word that means the same as two words.  Tighten the first sentence and cut the overlapping second sentence.  Make a noun more specific and do away with the accompanying adjective.  Anyway, back to Clive's sentence.

-- "... are working furiously, hammering huge lengths of timber across the mouth of the side-tunnel..."

Don't tell us these guys are working furiously. We can see it!  "Two Organisation Todt guards ... furiously hammer huge lengths of timber...."  We've shortened the sentence and lost none of the urgency.

-- "As they continue working..."

is the same as "As they work" so choose the shorter unless there's good reason not to.  Again, it can seem trivial, but all the little edits add up.  Earlier I suggested shorter words/sentences get processed quicker by the brain.  Syllable count is an example.  In the original there are seven syllables.  Revising gives three.  That's half the time required for your brain to make sense of it.  I know, crazy obsessive, right?  I'll take it to my grave.  FIST PUNCHES through the sodden dirt. Lightning rips the sky, silhouetting the fresh grave and unspoiled headstone. The rotting arm protruding from the earth FLOPS left and right, groping. Finds a golfball-sized stone. The hand blindly searches the air then connects with the headstone.  Slow SCRATCHING between BOOMS of thunder. The bony hand lets the stone plop to the ground. The arm retracts into the grave. CLOSE ON the headstone which formerly read: HERE LIES PITCHPATCH: HE WAS A GOOD MAN BUT A BAD RIDER OF EMUS. With words scratched out it now reads: PITCHPATCH: GOOD MAN, BAD EMU JOCKEY.

-- "... and begins to quickly fill them in."

Which is self-evident in the next line of dialogue.  Screenplays require some narrative hand holding, but know when to stand aside and let your characters do their job.

-- "The Sergeant glances around at the Private, but doesn't stop working."

A cut purely to reclaim a line of white-space. See my other 10PTTs for all the reasons you should reclaim white-space where possible.

-- "But the young Private seems impatient and cavalier. He ignores the comment..."

All that comes across in the Private's actions and dialogue.  Pointing it out here is redundant.  We get it.

Green proliferating here, so we know the pace is picking up.

-- "Another plank is lifted into place, and the barricade is nearing completion."

That's a perfectly serviceable sentence.  I would only fault the double-barrel passives: "is lifted", "is nearing".  Let's goose it. "Another plank goes into place and the barricade is nearly done."  I bet that fits on one line, so we shorten the page too.  Oh wait.  I cyaned "nearing completion" -- I think to point out that "nearing completion" is a slightly long-winded way of saying "nearly complete" or "almost complete" or "almost done".  Nothing terribly wrong with "nearing completion."  Just wanted to remind everyone about choosing the shortest, simplest words you can get away with -- unless choosing longer, denser words for effect.

-- "... as the generator returns to its previous steady rhythm."

To me, "previous" feels redundant in tandem with "returns."  When cutting words you ask yourself: does the sentence lose meaning after the trim? If no, it stays gone. "Why bother cutting a word, Pitch?" you groan.  Because you must apply your own rules consistently. Do that long enough and it becomes automatic.  You'll be a slick writing machine, you Krupp Dominator, you!

-- "Scrabbling for their torches, starting to panic. The private watching bemused as the other two CURSE under their breath."

Highlighted this one because it's a dynamic, effective couple of sentences. The first sentence fragment sets the tone -- we're seeing the other soldiers through the Private's viewpoint; the second hammers home the Private's dominant characteristic: he sees his comrades as superstitious fools. Two quick sentences and we know all about the Private and his misplaced bravado.

-- "Their torches are on but the beams are feeble, struggling to penetrate the darkness."

Clive takes two bites of the apple here.  The torches have feeble beams; the beams struggle to penetrate the darkness.  The two pretty much say the same thing.  Now that I'm looking at it again, why do we need "their torches are on" when we describe the torch beams in the next breath?  Obviously the torches are on.  I'm thinking this is another case of 2+2, not 4.  Why mention the torches are on when it cannot be any other way?  So... "Their torch beams struggle to penetrate the darkness" or the more ruthless "Their torches struggle to penetrate the darkness."

-- "His voice ECHOES away into the darkness."

Didn't highlight it on the page, but this bears brief discussion.  We used 'darkness' a sentence back.  Now we're using it again.  It's a minor thing, to be sure, but watch for reuse of a word too soon. It can be jarring and you'll soon find yourself watching for reuse of a word too soon.  (Too soon?)  A repeated word can be a lost opportunity to add to the scene.  For example:

"Their torches struggle to penetrate the darkness... SERGEANT: Oh, Christ!... His voice ECHOES away into the black void."

-- "A pause... ... then, from the side-tunnel, comes a new noise: A faint SCUFFLING sound."

Clive is doing what good storytellers do: he's being a showman.  But here I'd argue he narratively dilutes the power of that sound cue.  When filmed, the director and editor will achieve this moment in any number of ways, drawing out the pause to maximum dramatic effect.  On the page there's no need to draw it out.  "A pause..." on a line by itself is enough to seed my expectation. After that, don't tiptoe up to the reveal.  HIT me with it:

A pause...

From the side-tunnel comes a FAINT SCUFFLING sound.

-- "... is rapidly dropping..."

You see three innocent words.  I see The Three Stooges: one stumbles upon the other, who pratfalls into the third.

Six syllables. Passive construction.  Stretching a verb like toffee and pinning it with an adverb.  Bordering on contradiction: "dropping" implies gradual, "rapidly" implies... uh, rapid.  And if you "is ----ing" me often enough I will for realsies make you cry and your little dog too. Oh, I'm sorry.  I'll rephrase: "Pitch is making the writer cry."

For these subjective and sarcastic reasons, "is rapidly dropping" will not do.  So many better ways.  Tell them, Cyrano.


A god-damn peninsular. Nothing to do with the point I'm making, but thanks anyway.

Do not send three words to do the work of one.

-- "The Sergeant's voice is tight."

Tight. Okay. So that means... what exactly?  Constricted?  How would this play out on set?


Let context do the heavy lifting.  Don't tell us the character's voice is tight when it's self-evident in the dialogue.  "It's happening! Just like they said!"  We know it's not said with glee or rapture.  We know these two soldiers are fighting back fear.  Once established, stand back narratorially -- not a real word, by the way; however 'narratophilia (http://www.reference.com/browse/Narratophilia)' is -- and let the characters' actions and words take over.

-- "... his face now betraying an expression of sheer terror."

That's a fine sentence for a novel or perhaps a science paper titled Fear Modifiers And Their Effects On Nazi Tunnel Blockaders. It's a bunch of puffy verbiage, a roomful of yip-yipping, bouncing pink poodles. Daddy thinks those poodles need trimming.  Cue Leatherface and a pair of industrial electric sheers.

"his face scrunched in terror."
"his expression pure fear."
"his terrified eyes bugging out."

Say what you mean to say and say it succinctly.  If you're Cyrano de Bergerac, please, just keep talking and take as long as you need. Because sometimes brevity is not the answer.


-- "A German Army supply lorry crawls along a dirt road which winds through the forest, engine racing and wheels spinning as it slithers through the river of mud churned up by a hundred tanks and vehicles long gone."

A beautiful, beautiful sentence.  A feast of juicy verbs, a chain of vivid images.  Bravo.

-- "Ebert, moving with lithe, catlike alertness despite his tiredness, throws Engels an idle, sideways glance."

Does the catlike alertness apply solely to the glance Ebert throws at Engels? Or does "moving" refer to him slogging forward, and "catlike alertness" describes Ebert's general physical demeanor, i.e. all the while he trudges along he retains a catlike alertness?  Don't let ambiguity trip your reader, forcing them to backtrack after wondering, "Wait... Huh?"

If the former then that sentence seems way overblown, because it's describing the single action of Ebert glancing at Engels. Does Clive expect an actor to emote "lithe, catlike alertness but tired" all in a quick "idle, sideways glance"?

If the latter then the sentence is an important piece of characterization describing Ebert's dominant physical characteristic -- that he can stay alert despite numbing fatigue.

In either case, what I'm not keen on are the nouns "alertness" and "tiredness", which border on the abstract.  When you spot vague nouns, as here, ask yourself this: "Point to his alertness. Point to his tiredness. What are the material manifestations?"  For alertness you might point out, "It's in his eyes, how they never stop sweeping the perimeter. It's the way he holds his weapon, as if still warm from the last firefight.  It's in the way his lips pinch and relax as they roll a crooked, smoldering cigarette from one mouth corner to the other."  For tiredness you might point out the way Ebert stumbles now and again.  Mind sharp but body faltering. How he quietly fights for each breath.

I don't mean these are observations you should write into the script.  This is simply another exercise to keep your writing from drifting onto autopilot.  Give your abstract nouns close scrutiny. If you can make them concrete, all the better.

The remainding suggested edits on this page are for brevity.  There's a lot of fat weighing this page down. But perhaps that's appropriate given what's coming.  Think of this page as the calm before the storm.

Green green green green... green.  A storm of vibrant verbs.  Stop yer grinnin' and drop yer linen!

Damn, I want to see this scene -- if in fact it was shot and made it into another cut.

I don't need to remark on the suggested edits here.  Minor trims to keep the pace ripping along.

-- "... his free hand struggles to open the flap on his holster, to get to his P.38."

Line call.  It's a nice bit of description, but do we absolutely need to know about the flap?  Do we lose anything by trimming it back to become "unholster"?  The key element is Engels struggling on, refusing to give in to his awful injuries. So for my money, we don't need to deep dive into description here.

You'll notice Clive didn't just say "pistol" or "luger".  This author did his research.  He uses concrete, authentic terms and identifiers where he can, to further immerse you in the time and setting.

-- "... averts his eyes so as not to look upon the man he cannot help."

Another novelistic turn of phrase that reads pleasantly enough but in the script world would be attacked and torn to shreds by... *Pitchpatch scans the landscape for any roving packs of hungry wolves.  Nada.* ... Well, by me. I believe "averts" does all the heavy lifting here, so we lose nothing slimming down on the page what should remain a nice character moment on film.

Plus... wait for it... we reel back a line of whitespace.  Huzzah!  Bunker Nazis in there, Grammar Nazi out here.

-- "And Kreuzmann is caught in the shockwave..."

That passive feels right.  Because we want the focus to begin on Kreuzmann, then... KA-POW.  But if I were to activate it: "The shockwave OBLITERATES Kreuzmann." Or a more poetic: "The shockwave BLASTS through Kruezmann leaving a halo of red mist."  Awww yeeeah.

EXT FOREST ELSEWHERE DUSK is where the movie starts, in the version I saw.  Imagine my disappointment.

So we're done with the prologue and now we start the story good and proper: THE BUNKER.

Clive keeps the conflict going.  From here on it's German upon German.

Can't say I cared for the movie.  I've not read past the first ten of Clive's screenplay.  Despite disliking the movie I'll probably finish the script -- if only to see what else the producers/director screwed up along the way.  I know I'm in good hands.  Clive knows how to tell a story on the page.

Here endeth the 10PTT.  Toodles!

This is great stuff Pitch. I personally hated the movie and as a result never thought to look at the script. I will visit now. Particularly like your "The shockwave BLASTS through Kruezmann leaving a halo of red mist." Ah red mist, one of the better effects CGI has given cinema.

Sibo, can you recall if the opening ambush/sniping scene was present when you watched The Bunker?

I don't remeber it. Just started with an approach to the bunker as I recall. Lousy art design, I remember that.

Found a link to the opening on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON3lF05fOzA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON3lF05fOzA)

That's the same opening I watched.  Maybe The Horror Enthusiast meant "a pretty good gun battle" further into the movie (I don't remember one).

Pitch up to his usual, being quite informative and entertaining.  With that being said, I wouldn't have made it past the first five pages -- even with the much needed changes you made.  Just wasn't digging it at all.  A lot of the punchy stuff was trying too hard.  I also would've been a lot more ruthless in my editing.

I wanted to. It's a struggle between expression and function.  Like a mother coyote able to feed only five of her six cubs.  She's eyeing the goofy runt of the litter, the one most assured to one day break its neck chasing a buzzard over a cliff. He won't make it as a hunter. He'll slow them down. He'll be trouble every day of his life. Logic says he needs to go. But damn, the way he chases his tail and snores on his back is just too cute. He stays because he enriches the world in other ways.

I say that not only as a man with a tail who snores on his back.

Don't they go hand and hand?  Shouldn't a suspenseful scene be suspenseful?  It shouldn't come across as passive or flat, right?  Just look at that generator failing scene. That's a great example of what I'm talking about.  Just wasn't composed well at all.  You never really felt what the characters felt. But then again, he got a movie made - so what the hell do I know?

Shouldn't a suspenseful scene be suspenseful? -- yes.  I thought the generator-failing scene was okay. Nothing special, just adequate.  But wow, watch the filmed scene.  Any suspense on the page got kidnapped, beaten, issued a new identity and thrown from a speeding black Escalade somewhere in Costa Rica.

In the opening shot we get a nervous German soldier stalking through an underground tunnel, jabbing his torch this way and that as he goes... and the goddamn place is lit like a shopping mall.  I'm sitting there wondering, And he needs the torch why exactly?

Oh I don't doubt that one bit.  If there's one thing this proves, it's that the producers weren't up to snuff.  No producer worth their salt would've green-lit this.  It has not ready for primetime written all over it.

http://www.writersguild.org.uk/news-a-features/film/418-from-the-bill-to-beverley-hills.html

Clive talks about scripting Last Days On Mars, and his journey from The Bill to Hollywood.


(emphasis mine)

And here's the trailer for Dawson's LAST DAYS ON MARS...

I'm sad to report Dawson's THE LAST (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_last_days_on_mars/) DAYS ON MARS (http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-last-days-on-mars) is lousy.  Dull, pointless, plodding.  I'm curious now to read the script and see what, if anything changed between script and screen.  I started reading it a year ago but stopped not too far in because the first act wasn't gripping me.

I guess that answers my question.

Proves that you can be a good writer on the page, but if your story's not there...