Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Screenwriting Mistake #2: Ellipses

This is by far the most overused device in screenwriting. Mel Brooks got so fed up with seeing ellipses all the time that in “The History of the World, Part 1” he had one character say, “dot dot dot” out loud every time he paused. The reason that ellipses are so annoying, in addition to being incredibly overused, is that they are just another way for writers to tell the actors how to deliver their lines. There’s no surer way for a screenwriter to piss off an actor than to tell her precisely how to deliver her lines.
If you believe that it’s important for an actor to pause at a certain spot, then make sure that your dialogue is good enough that this will be obvious to anyone who reads it. You could also interject a quick action description in the middle of the dialogue and then pick it back up where you left off. But by far the best way to write dialogue is to trust the actors to deliver their lines in the best way possible. They have worked hard for years to learn how to do this and they often interpret the dialogue in ways that are better than you imagined them.
In my opinion, there is exactly one time when it’s acceptable to use ellipses in a screenplay and I don’t even recommend that you use them then. This is when one character starts talking and then another character finishes his thought. For example:
WILLIAM
Do you remember how we used to…
GWEN
…have sex in your parents’ bed?
WILLIAM
No, I was going to say “play tennis.”
I recommend instead that you use two dashes (--) when a character stops talking in the middle of a sentence, regardless of the reason. You should always do this when one character interrupts another, but I think it’s better to do so in this case as well. Ellipses are so ubiquitous that if you submit a script that doesn’t contain even one of them, the reader will pass your script around the office just to prove that he actually found one without any ellipses. Hell, he might even be so excited that he will rip his four-year-old’s stick figure drawing of their family off of the refrigerator and replace it with your ellipses-less screenplay. If you want your reader’s undying appreciation (which you do), there’s no surer way to do that than to remove all of the ellipses from your script.

23 comments:

  1. I'm personally VERY annoyed that the comment form at this blog reads "Enter your comment..."

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've never had trouble reading one-sided conversations where the sentences just run together like a regular block of dialogue. If you have a phone conversation that's hard to follow, it might be okay to put something between sentences in that case. Ellipses could work, if you're sparing with them. I've also seen people write "(beat)" or "(pause)" though it's better to avoid parentheticals as well. Try writing this conversation without anything between the sentences and only resort to dividing them if absolutely necessary.

    Phil

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  3. Thanks for the advice, Phil. This is a great resource.

    Here's a quick formatting clarification question.

    Would you put a space before the two dashes or "butt" them up against the cut-off word?

    WILLIAM
    Do you remember how we used to--

    or

    WILLIAM
    Do you remember how we used to --

    Thanks again,
    Tom

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    Replies
    1. Any time you give me a choice between butt or no butt, I'm going to have a tough time choosing the latter. :-) Thankfully, this time it's actually the right choice, so butt the dashes up against the cut-off word as you did in your first example.

      Phil

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  4. Phil. Thanks for the great article. I agree with everything you say, yet I find myself using ellipsis in one particular way that you don't address. In narrative I sometimes use them to show a CONTINUATION of action from one line to another line. I use them to propel the action forward and down the page. Like this:

    He reaches for the gun. Quivering fingers stop short in the flickering candlelight. Pull back slightly. Then...

    Slowly, unsteadily, he picks up the pistol and aims the barrel at his chest, near his heart. Moments pass.

    Any opinion about this use of them? Thanks.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for your questions, James. There's no need to write that "Then..." in the sample you gave. That actually slows down the reader a bit, when you want the reader to be able to move quickly down the page. There's no doubt that the next block of description is a continuation of the action above.

      In this example, I would also remove the "slowly, unsteadily" since you already demonstrated his hesitance by having him pull his hand back before picking up the gun. I would also remove "moments pass" since any actor would be able to milk the most possible drama out of this scene without that level of direction.

      Hope this helps!
      Phil

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  5. Hi Phil

    Your blog is fabulous. I am a novice starting out in screenplay writing. A question. How do I write telephone converstaion between two indivuduals without using paranthesis or action. For eg. if a person is talking on the phone how do I write the other person's conversations in the same scene ?

    Apologies if the question is too naive for the forum.

    Thank you

    Jeevan

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Jeevan!

      If you want to show only one of the people who is having the phone conversation, then write their dialogue normally and write "(V.O.)" next to the other person's name for their dialogue.

      If you want to go back and forth between two people who are talking on the phone, then write a slug line for the first person's location and show that person answering the phone. Then write a slug line for the second person's location and show that person talking on the phone. Then before you go back to the first person, write on its own separate line "INTERCUT PHONE CONVERSATION." Then you can just write out their conversation as if they were in the same room. When the conversation is over, write a new slug line to indicate where the next scene will take place.

      Hope this helps!
      Phil

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  6. Hey Phil,

    Quick question. In a description line such as:

    Margaret sits behind her desk writing a letter. She stops, deliberates... then crushes the letter and tosses it.

    Would you say those ellipses are unnecessary? I think I know the answer: yes, because rather than telling the actor how to deliver their lines this is telling them how to act. I just wanted to check with you though.

    Thanks! btw absolutely loving this blog.

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  7. Hi Phil,

    Thanks for the great blog and I understand your opinion is common in the industry but I must say I think it’s invalid and likely a product of many oversized and hypersensitive egos being prioritized over the final product.

    Please explain what is wrong with a writer expressing his/her entire vision for the scene, given the script is typically the only place a writer can express his/her vision, including indications of how the dialogue was intended to be read, the envisioned soundtrack, or even (gasp) how it was envisioned scenes would be shot.

    I think writing is fundamentally different from other artist’s contributions to a film because it is the birthplace of the totality of scenes and dialogue, and therefore it is inherently the writer’s responsibility to imagine in total how a scene will look and how dialogue will sound before they can determine if it is any good. So why should writers be stifled from making sure the script clearly expresses the writers entire vision? How does this have any chance of making the final product better, assuming that is everyone’s priority?

    Of course, I am not suggesting that artists and executives that later work on the project should be prevented from altering the script, now that would be antithetical to the collaborative process. And everyone knows that virtually all scripts will be altered during the creative process, right through editing of the film, to serve the final product, and I agree this makes perfect sense.

    It seems to me that it’s not the writers who are attempting to tell other artists how to do their job, but rather it is others who are attempting to censor writers from expressing their full vision for a scene – maybe so others can take credit for parts of writers vision that were inferred but deterred from being expressly included.

    Please explain why my opinion is invalid, either in your own view or in the widely held view.

    Thank you.

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    Replies
    1. I love what you wrote Samuel Adams and I agree mostly with what you said.

      I, too, try to write freely and expressively without being hindered by formulaic formats or "this is how you must write or no one will read your script" thoughts.

      Now, having said that, I still try to stick within certain peramiters that won't make a reader shy away from reading a well written script, although not following the formular, but that get's the point across.

      My grammar isn't the greatest; one reason why it takes me longer to edit my scripts after I've written the first draft.

      Delete
  8. Thanks for the advice. I need to ask, do you only use the two dashes at the end of the interrupted line, or do you also use them at the beginning of the next line? Or does it not matter? I've managed to erase all ellipses from my screenplay but there are several places where the hyphens have been necessary.

    Also is there supposed to be a gap between the first dash and the word preceding it, or do you just put it directly beside the word? The latter seems like the more logical thing to do as not only can it save space but it also makes the interruption seem faster.

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    Replies
    1. Are you even still on this blog? I've noticed this page has been here for years and so have most of the comments.

      Delete
  9. How about this?

    PETER
    Rob should know about Peter's... 'involvement' in Mike's death.

    ReplyDelete
  10. If you kids would check the right hand side of the blog, you'll see that it ended in 2013.

    ReplyDelete
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  15. I want to write something with nothing but ellipses at the end of sentences. Life is muddy and messy and incomplete sometimes, and personally I find it exciting as an actor to have ellipses around. It gives me far more creativity.

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