After receiving the feedback from Spiro Hughes I was unsure about the page break point as I hadn’t read anything about this in my previous research so I turned to my books and then when they failed to give any specific advice I searched online. The most informative sources I could find about page breaks was from a software website and Script Writing Secrets which didn’t seem particularly trustworthy and weren’t incredibly detailed. So I then emailed Lucy Hay and hoped she might reply in time for my deadline. Thankfully she did and her advice has provoked me to change the page breaks I had implemented before.
Journal
Final draft
I’m editing my final draft using the feedback from yesterday. A couple of format issues: I cut all of the ‘continued’ markers at the bottom of each page as both Lucy Hay and Benjamin Spiro Hughes said that these were old fashioned. I’ve also placed each new scene on a new page as that was another piece of advice from Spiro Hughes, although I feel that it might be an old formatting point as the produced scripts I read didn’t have new pages for each scene, I’m going to continue researching this point to make sure it’s correct.
Moving on to the story based points he made. I changed a lot of the over description so that my end user (the production company or script reader) reads into the action more. I also changed some of the issues he called plot holes so that they aren’t a problem anymore. I did however keep two of his plot hole based points in the text as they come into play further on in the story: the out of date drugs selling stays in as it’s an important plot device and the student loan/debt shows Lily’s naivety.
As well as giving me feedback on my script he also gave me notes on the synopsis which were pretty important. I’ve made the changes to the synopsis that he mentions and I’ve also extended the final draft to include more details of the plot as well as editing the writing so that it’s more engaging for the end user.
One of his more important points was that I should include a snappy tagline with the synopsis. I researched taglines online and in my sources and found that taglines are more associated with produced films whereas loglines are used with spec screenplays. I then looked into how to write a successful logline and started working on one for my script. I came up with:
Captivated by the glamorous life of the hacienda, a conflicted party girl must pay off her increasing debts and choose between the social status that she wants, the idealistic love that is offered to her and the opportunity to make more of herself.
I feel it captures the tone of the story, the conflicts involved in Lily’s life and is just descriptive enough to gain the interest of my end user but not too much that it gives away the plot. As a logline should be.
Feedback
I got an email today from my industry insider and he’s given me some feedback on the first draft. It’s mostly about the narrative and story planning, some formatting pointers and a rather embarrassing note about the synopsis (I forgot to put the title of the script in). He also complimented my dialogue which is fantastic as that was one of my main worries as a novel script writer.
Contact worries
I haven’t heard back from Benjamin Spiro Hughes yet and I’m getting rather worried as the deadline is looming ominously. I don’t want to email him again though as, from my previous enquiries to other professionals, I was told that professionalism and politeness are important. I’ll keep making my own edits without his input so that I have a further developed script to hand in just in case he doesn’t come through.
Second Draft
As I’m editing my script to create my second draft I’ve been re-reading some of the books I used for my preliminary research about scriptwriting. There are quite a few things that I’m going back and changing after my re-reads, one of these is format based. From reading through the produced scripts I found I had originally thought that writing transitions before each new scene (‘CUT TO:’) was a standard part to screenwriting formats but whilst reading through my sources I found that it’s actually rather outdated. Richard Walter says, ‘Should writers write CUT TO: between scenes? No’.
Another source I’ve been using in my second draft is the website Your Screenplay Sucks which has a list of words to search for in the document and change so that the writing flows much better.
Getting feedback
With my newly polished off first draft finished I decided to email Benjamin Spiro Hughes again and ask for some feedback. Once I’ve gotten that I can then make any alterations that he recommends and create myself a fresh new draft.
New changes
Following his response I’ve made some changes to my first draft to create more realistic dialogue – his advice helped me to break up some of the exposition which I know from reading up on dialogue is an important aspect to successful screenwriting.
Replies and advice
I’ve had a reply from one of my tutors and his advice about the dialogue was excellent.
‘Study the way people actually talk. Listen. You’ll find that people rarely come out with stark, simple statements. As people are trying to formulate a thought, they might have several goes at it, or change their mind in the middle of a sentence, or not quite say what they wanted to say. Mostly we communicate through implication, through suggestion and inference. If your characters speak obliquely, the audience will decode their words as we do in life. This allows for audience participation. There is something rather dull about characters who just deliver flat information, even if they’re telling you about their feelings. It’s just information about feelings. But real, living dialogue that suggests deeper levels to what is being said, is both thrilling and, as it happens, real.’
Literature reviews and emails
I’ve begun writing my literature review – I’ve split it into sections of research so character, format, adaptation etc. I’ve been getting more nervous about my success as a screenwriter so I also emailed some of the creative writing tutors to see if any of them can answer a few queries that have been bugging me. It’s a short list of questions:
- As a marketing item a treatment should describe the script’s action in a concise and colourful manner but what would you say makes a successful treatment?
- What do you think are the biggest mistakes made by aspiring scriptwriters? Do you have any top tips for writing realistic dialogue?
- The last one was rather important to me because I’m still worried about my skill at dialogue.
Title ideas
My script needs a title. I was originally planning on leaving it as House of Mirth because I felt with the house music scene that it had connotations to the adaptation but I think that might be a little misleading. I then started trying to think of ideas that worked the dealing in but they all sounded cheesy and obvious, House of Acid? Terrible. My next ideas was Mancunian slang from the nineties and I came up with Dead Sound. Which works in two ways: the ominous ending and the involvement music had in Lily’s fall as well as the slang for very good. But this sounded too thriller-esque.
Following on from this idea I started looking into using that music connection. I looked into song titles from the Manchester music scene, or, more specifically, New Order song titles and I thought of World in Motion. This applies well to the ups and downs of Lily’s story as well as the world that she lives in. I then cut the title down to In Motion which I decided had a more punchy sound to it.
A Novel Script 