readitordont:

Here’s a different flavor of nerd ass shit for you: LET’S TALK ABOUT STAGE DIRECTIONS.

Or, specifically, why I’m starting to write my scripts with a more conversational tone and if this is dooming me to obscurity (but why I don’t think it is).

I suggest you read THIS POST for the full argument (and she’s talking stage plays), because I’m only going to excerpt the parts I’m responding to:

There’s a New York Times article making the rounds (I got to it admittedly late, via Art Hennessey), detailing one of Paula Vogel’s recent “Boot Camp” exercises at Second Stage. And while the Boot Camps themselves are fantastic courses for writers, and I highly encourage anything that gives them more exposure, the quote that has really gotten everybody’s hackles up comes courtesy of “Young Theatre Director” David Gray, who didn’t like Vogel saying that stage directions can be used to provide different types of moments in plays:

Such a heavy authorial hand drew heated complaints, however, from Nicholas Gray, a young theater director who had been invited by an associate. Mr. Gray railed against lengthy stage directions, saying he crossed them out in scripts before he would begin rehearsals with his actors.

“It’s the playwright being tyrannical over all of the other artists who will ever work on the play,” Mr. Gray said, adding that even “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” would not escape his pen.

Young Master Gray is being, at best, incredibly reductive, and at worst, to use a technical term, a huge haughty jerk. But one thing that I haven’t seen being discussed yet is what led to the attitude Gray and those like him espouse, and what we as playwrights can do to avoid it. In short: we need to make sure our stage directions belong in our plays in the first place.

I’ve only done one play in my life, I co-wrote it from a book and had dated the director before she switched to lesbianism, so I’m fairly sure I had the most collaborative process ever. That being said - if anyone strips anything out of my script out of habit, I will want to puncture one of their major arteries. 

It’s disrespectful like not reading the Director’s Note before the play starts is disrespectful. What you’re saying as an artist, critic or straight up reader of material is that you’re already convinced you are smarter than the writer. There’s no other way to interpret the action of removing something from a script without allowing the script to function the way it’s author wanted it to. Maybe you, the reader, ARE smarter than the writer, but that’s something the work will tell you in it’s own words (the ones you want to cut out). 

I can understand as a theater director the desire to strike all the stage directions and start from scratch. It serves a dual purpose: One - you don’t want your actors being confused about who is captaining the ship if the stage directions are bad or counter-intuitive to the narrative angle the production is taking. Two - It allows you to immediately seize authorship of the actors moving through space. It’s going to be your vision anyway as the director, so why even pretend that you got any ideas from the script?

Before proposing four rules of stage directions, the author of the post goes on to say:

Your script  is a skeleton that your collaborators build the meat on to, and stage directions are just additional bones in that skeleton. What they are notis an instruction manual on where all the organs and muscles go, and how sarcastically the heart beats. But, of course, it’s hard to let go of that kind of control, and trust your collaborators, and so a lot of writers try to dictate everything and bring their imaginary productions to life on the page. And that leads to Young Theatre Directors who decide that, y’know what? Fuck it. No stage directions for everyone. 

Here’s where we start to get into my own personal experience as an independent creative who writes and produces.

I propose that the draft of your story that you try to get everyone excited about should be more like a comic book script than a bunch of dialogue outlining scenes and characters.

This is where I differ from almost every course I’ve ever taken on screenwriting. All of them are focused on crafting a story structure, and if they have anything to say about what a script should feel like to read, it’s about format not content. No one really talks about diction in the sinew of a script, something that really struck me when I was working as a reader and devouring multiple features per day.

I don’t think that being wordy and conversational can turn a shitty script into an amazing script. Not at all. I’d be lying if I said I believed that in the slightest. However, as I do more producing in the world of independent film, I’m starting to learn that someone’s first impression of a script is much more important than proper formatting.

I agree with the common wisdom that huge paragraphs are daunting, so formatting gimmicks to keep things to a three-line max are abound, but what I’m trying to do is make it fun to READ. 

I have this story in my head and I can’t remember where I heard it, but: one of the writers on Lost (a series notorious for it’s vulgarity in stage directions) impressed Damon Lindelof in the episode where Kate and Sawyer are in the bear cages with the line: “Fucked City: Population 2” to end a scene. 

Which is a great line, because it puts you immediately in the headspace of BOTH of the characters as a reader without describing: “Kate looks for a way out her cage, Sawyer beats the bars with a stick looking for weakness, everyone cries.” 

Above I have a still of Page 9 from my Spec Pilot “Recessed.”

The dialogue is normal, then I fuck traditional format and go for the good read. Here are the things I shouldn’t be doing, but I did anyway:

- “SLAMS” probably shouldn’t be capitalized. But it stands out on the page the way I want it to audibly stand out in the scene.

- “struck dumb by how he talked himself into a corner.” This is impossible to act. It’s what I hope the performance communicates and what the performance NEEDS to communicate to get Rick where I need him to be.

- “Begin Song” This is horrible and you should never call your shot to a song like this. You should also not include an MP3 of all the tracks you’ll never get the rights to with your script. Just overall - don’t be me in this fashion, some people find it really annoying.

- MONTAGE OF MENIAL TASKS. I’m very specific about motion in this script because the entire first act is a single scene of menial tasks. I pile up my montage in single shots like this so you - the reader - just like some future viewer - will be unable to separate what is important from what is menial and process. 

- “He stares into space for a moment, that sad moment right be for you masturbate as a last resort before crying. The moment you see yourself, guys.” <——- This is my worst sin in this script, but if it gets to you, you’re on Rick’s side. Which is good because the rest of the script is revealing that you probably shouldn’t have been on his side. Here, though, the message I’m sending is: Rick is just like me and I think I’m just like you. Who knows if it gets through to people on that level, but it certainly makes them stop and take a moment reading like Rick takes a moment in the scene.

- “On:” This is me directing. This sometimes pisses directors off, but if these things aren’t shown in this order, they might as well not be there at all.

Here’s the working theory, and I’ll update you if I find out I’m horribly mistaken, but: As someone who is writing to get independent projects made, I write so that reading my work is something of an experience. The collaboration comes once you are on-board the project. Then, you and I get to work together to make the project a unified vision of awesomeness.

Overall, it’s easier to get people involved in something that’s vague, but you’ll find that people will attach themselves to the void with their name on it. If you’re an awesome up-and-coming costume designer, you can attach yourself to something without a visual style and ensure that whatever comes through is purely from your mind. The problem with that is, what’s from your mind might not be best for the story.

I’ve found that to keep everyone focused on the PASSION that allows the group to tell the best possible COLLABORATIVE STORY, it’s good to lure people in with something that’s in it’s best form. The movie will be a movie just like this script is a script. The spec or first draft of something should be it’s own piece of entertainment. I think you end up finding better people that way. People who see what they want in what you present in the first place, rather than someone who thinks they can “make it work” for themselves.

Or I could just be an idiot, poisoning my own work with my self-centered, egotistical views about storytelling. 

Have opinions? Tell me.