Well, the Screenwriters' Diary made a nice swooshing sound as it left my Outbox this morning. Hope you got it ok. Let me know if you didn't.
I won't say anything about the BAFTAs. Partly because other people will say more intelligent things elsewhere, but mostly because I once again lost control of the remote control and had to endure "Dancing On Ice". Does nobody in my household understand gender politics? I'm the Alpha Male. The remote control belongs to me!
Anyway, a while ago Mark over at The Lower Frequencies posed a question a little while ago asking for suggestions about trimming your dialogue and I completely forgot to post my tuppence worth. My little tip is probably going to sound really trite and stupid, but it works really well for me. Here it is:
I hate dialogue going over two pages. It's an obsessive compulsive thing, I think it looks ugly and I feel that it gives the impression that I'm not in control of my dialogue. Just the way I feel about it, please don't take it as a personal affront if yours does that!
So, if I have that situation, stuff has to be trimmed so it all fits on the page nicely. The way scripts are formatted, dialogue is the most wasteful part of the page, vertically speaking, so I look at getting rid of that first. So it really gets you thinking "Hmmm... Do I really need the character to say that line/sentence/word? If I get rid of it, that piece of dialog - which is important - will shift up and be on the one page."
Hope that makes sense and is of benefit!
Monday 9 February 2009
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I, too, like tidy, and try to do it myself, to an extent. The trouble is, everything tends to reformat itself when printing, so all those lovely page-ends appear at the top of the next!
ReplyDeleteWhat writing software do you use?
ReplyDeleteFirst Draft - I love it, but it has its quirks, the page count actually differs depending on which computer I use.
ReplyDeleteAt least you don't have a flatmate who makes you watch 'Demons'.
ReplyDelete