... but I digress: the Home Handyman. Halleluiah.

     My husband's name is praised at Home Dept, and he is honored among men. At least those wearing tool belts.
     When we bought this little fixer-upper many years ago, we were innocents, unaware how many  jobs required power tools, and how expensive they were. And neither of us suspected my husband's lust for acquiring these tools, and how, as the days lengthened into years, how many of these expensive and yet somehow single purposed tools it would take to fill what we had believed to be a spacious garage.  Or how, lust maddened, my husband would select home repair projects based solely on the need for the acquisition of a new and exotic tool.
      Over the weekend, he installed a new micrwave oven, one of those built-in jobs that goes above  the stove.  Do you realize that G.E. no longer places the screw holes in the same positions it did ten years ago when the oven was new?
     Observations from family, er, well, observers: "I don't think you should drill through the side of the oven.  Won't that let those little microwave thingys out?" "Why is there blood on the microwave?" "Oh my God!" "What's burning?" "Is that a fire on the top of the stove?"  "Oh, my God!" "Where are the bandaids?"
     These remarks were interspersed with many trips to Home depot, although I don't think any new power tools were actually purchased.  The job did require a power saw, a power drill with several sizes of bits, none of which we had, copious amounts of duct tape, a tetanus shot and stitches, and a stern lecture by a doctor  my son's age who probably does not have a fixer-upper and whose lust for power tools is satisfied in the operating room.
      Most of this digression is true.  I may have exaggerated the physical injury aspect, but there was blood.

Scene Three: Not You Again

     Like it or not, you have to live with your characters.  There will probably be quite a few and they will inhabit your dreams and often your waking hours as well, for quite a long time.  Each character should be recognizable, even if his or her name is not attached.  Every speech cadence is different.  Some may repeat themselves. Don't overdo accents. When the character is introduced, you can throw in their drawl or  speech peculiarity. After that, go to standard English and let the reader or the actor supply most of the speech quirks.  Don't drop every ing, even if you are sure your character will. Go lightly on the apostrophes to indicate skipped letters, because lots of between line chatter is visually annoying.
       Characters also have physical mannerisms. Some tug on a strand of hair, or seem to always be adjusting their clothing.  Don't just throw in mannerisms randomly.  Those are what card players call "tells" and communicate your character's ease or discomfort, his or her secrets or personal history. But don't use your tells so liberally that your characters seem to twitch and babble through each appearance. Moderation in all things.

Scene Two: Who and Where

    Your script will need characters and a setting, unless you are trying some new wave thing, which you aren't. The easy and cheapest locale is your own city. Film companies like my city, Atlanta, and if you don't already know a lot about your locale, make yourself knowledgeable enough to write with authority.  You can't be sloppy about locations because viewers will catch you every time, even if the director doesn't. You will lose the trust of the audience, and that is critical.
     Let your characters lead you.  If you aren't writing fluid, natural dialogue, listen to people, make notes, and read everything aloud that you write.  Reading for an audience is best, if they will be honest with you (that excuses your mother,) or just to yourself.  But it must be aloud. Listen for the musicality, the beat, the swing of it. Good dialogue could almost be labeled andante, legato, forte.
     Picture each of your characters. Cast your script, just for yourself. Make your dialogue play the characters off one another.  A comedy?  Not everyone has to be hilarious. Drama? Find the comedy relief. Unrelieved drama is dull. Pay close attention to the rules for developing the movement of the story.  Generally, by page five, lay out the subject matter of your story through your dialogue and action.  Page twenty? The inciting scene: the point of no return.  What ever happens here sets your characters inexorably on their course. And on, and on - milestone points through to the end.
       If you think that those exact points can't be that important, be aware that a studio reader judging your script may look at only page five, page twenty, page fifty, and so on.  First off, they want to know that you know what you are doing.  No one has time to waste. Second, they want to be sold, and those pages are your pitch.  Third, they don't want to work for it.  That's your job
      There are programs to help you format.  Final Draft is the main one generally in use (Tom Hanks uses Final Draft!) It will help you create a perfectly formatted script, but it won't proof, or make you interesting.  It won't ring a bell at page twenty and tell you to get on the ball, either.  That comes from writing and rewriting, having outside editing and proofing and practice.

...but I digress. Not your mother's Schwinn.

      There are times that t.v. truly justifies its existence, such as when you see the Alps from an even higher  helicopter-occupied spot in mid-air, then drop down to the kitchen gardens of ancient villages, and visit lace patterned tile roof tops of thousand year old town halls.  But I have been watching all that and more for the last two weeks.  The Tour de France.  The bicycle race? you say. Oh, yes,  I guess. More than 100 pro cyclists from around the world, in teams, a Leroy Neiman painting come to life, strung along narrow Gallic roads, climb the Alps and the Pyrenees, go though Roman Southern France and chateau laden valleys.  Every once in a while, some fall in a terrible tangle of flesh and metal, and every day someone wins something, and at the end they ride around the Arc de Triumph in Paris, but in reality, it is sport and history and travelogue  all in their most immediate, exquisite forms.
      It's time for the wheat harvest, by the way, and you can be in flowered fields with boys in straw hats, alongside a road way where hundreds cheer the racers, and a few crazed fans make fools of themselves in time honored fashion.
     In starts at 8 a.m. here in Atlanta, and goes until 11 a.m. daily, then is replayed throughout the day and evening. ESPN (44 on Comcast) carries it, as does NBC Sports.  It is startling, mesmerizing, and it matters not a bit if you know the complex, chess-like rules of the pelloton.  You will never have seen anything like it.

    

Scene One: Death of the Semicolon

     Writing a screenplay is like writing a novel on crack.  The novel, that is, not the novelist. You have 120 pages max. (120 pages=120 minutes)to say everything that your characters have to say, and do everything they have to do. Dialogue comes in two or three line bursts. Those lines are super short and travel down the center of the page, leaving those who think they know more than you do to cover the surrounding white space with their notes.
     Between these bursts of dialogue, action lines tell the actors, director, camera people, costume designer and caterer, for all I know, what you see on the screen.  Those lines are also limited to two or three, but the run a little longer than the dwarfed dialogue lines. They are limited to what you can see and hear.  No background material, no odd family relationships or fraternal memberships.  Show it or forget it.
      And above it all, the scene heading tersely states whether it is interior or exterior, roughly where (Megan's House) and day or night.
      This is by way of saying that a screenplay is a team effort, and for those of us who really aren't team players, this can be the source of enormous frustration, requiring almost superhuman self discipline to refrain from writing : "As dawn breaks over the golden poplars lining Megan's tidy street, a dark clad figure slips...."  and sadly I could write so much more.
      One of the most brutal blows was the death of Strunk and White (Elements of Style) perpetrated by the many non-English majors who inhabit the film industry. For instance, the love of the triple dot pops up everywhere, not to signal an interrupted sentence as God intended, but mostly just for the hell of it, as far as I can tell.  Maybe they just stopped thinking about that mini-morsel of dialogue and felt it was time to move on.  Hey, if it feels good, do it, scriptwriting style.
        Another grievous loss is the semicolon.  (Megan picks her newspaper off the front steps; she looks right and left before closing her door. Or "Bobby, come here; there is something you have to see.") Gone. "Never use a semicolon in a screenplay."  Words that struck my heart.  What kind of savages are these people?
        Having a good deal of my educational history struck dead, what more could they do me?

...but I digress.

     Some days my digression has a theme. Today's theme is cheese. Since it is Bastille Day, that is appropriate, I think.
     I mentioned  to my husband (so far my first and only husband) that I had bought some French Brie to have on crackers before dinner. He said, "I think it's bad. I ate a bite and it tasted burned." I thought a few minutes. "A piece from the cheese in the container, or a piece on the plate?" And in that moment, I knew. "The plate," he said.
     Let me just say we have a very old dog with a skin condition who has to have his medicine hidden in innovative ways. Like stuffing his pills in a piece of Brie. Which he spit out, and which I saved for a second attempt later. So there was a plate that usually belongs to the cat, holding a piece of Brie wadded up around a couple of bright pink pills. And that Brie is gone. And the dog is still scratching but my husband isn't.
   

Fade In

      This blog has a limited yet vast subject.  Roughly, and with digressions, it is how little ol' me (5'3 and over 65) in the course of one year, learned to write screenplays and have one find its way to Meryl's people, with results as yet unknown. This was not an over the transom job.  This was an agent-like artist's rep. (I'm the artist.  One whom I will call AARP, with irony, is the agent-art-rep...) pitching, and people in a vast organization liking what they heard and welcoming it's digital arrival.
      Before I get completely immersed in my subject, me, I want to thank Anne Zan* Marie Steadham (of In The Shade of the Cherry Tree) and my daughter (who wishes to remain anonymous ) both of whom helped me traverse the ways of the blog.
     I am a writer, who has written maniacally for the last year, and almost constantly for the eight or so preceding years, and always to literary purpose.  This blog won't help anyone do anything.  It won't make your life better.  It may be the basis of my next book, but presumably that would only help me. You may feel free to laugh derisively, shrink in horror, or take naked enjoyment in another writer's future insanity defense.  Be my guest.
      Away we go. July 2011.


*Sorry Zan! Curse you spell check!!





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