Writing action

We have been incredibly busy this week, and we even managed to turn out another draft of our screenplay.

Another one? Yes. Writing is rewriting.

Was it really necessary? Yes.

We got a ton of great feedback from all of our friends, and there were some definite commonalities across the board. When that happens, it usually means there's something to fix.

Screenplays are a language all their own. And while my husband and I have been writing for over ten years separately and about five years as a team, we've still got things to learn. If you're writing screenplays and you think there's nothing left to learn, well, you're wrong. Hopefully every screenplay you write teaches you something, and we've learned a bundle with this one.

A note that came up a few times with our bona fide industry professional readers referred to the way we write action. This is not entirely without precedent; while we've both written multiple screenplays, we haven't written that many action scripts, so we knew this was an area where we could improve.

A few rules:

--Paragraphs of action dialogue should be no longer than four lines (some say three lines)

--Action dialogue should be as active and as spare as possible.

I'm going to throw some examples in here so that you can see what I mean. In fact, I was jotting down notes for this column while I was revising the script. How's that for multitasking, kids!

OLD PARAGRAPH:

Suddenly the windows of the bank shatter outward as machine gun fire rips toward the police. The cops take as much cover as possible and try to return fire, but the machine guns are keeping them pinned down.

COP 1:
Cover me!

NEW PARAGRAPH:

The bank windows shatter outward as machine gun fire rips toward the police. The cops take cover.

COP 1:
Cover me!

OLD PARAGRAPH:

Claire still lays on her bed. Her back is to the wall, and she’s staring at the door, which is still open. There is a KNOCK and Roger pokes his head through.

NEW PARAGRAPH:

Claire lies on the bed, staring at the open door. Roger KNOCKS and pokes his head through.

Look for instances of "is/are" (the machine guns are keeping them pinned down) or "sits" or "begins to" or "starts to." Then, get rid of them. When you have a lot of description to read, it slows down the speed at which someone can read it. This will, in turn, make your action feel slow.

And be sure to cut anything extraneous. Machine gun fire keeps the police pinned down? You don't say, Captain Obvious.

Use words like "suddenly" very sparingly. Some people say not to use adverbs at all, but I think they're OK in small doses. Taking it out in the example given doesn't really change the scene or make it less surprising, so evaluate them on a case by case basis.