Thursday, April 14, 2005

I'm trying to figure out what to write in Crafty TV Writing about writing pages. As Moira Kirland said to me, "That's the easy part."

Well, sure. Easy for you. Easy for me, in fact. But how do you explain it? You take the beats from the beat sheet and turn them into brilliant scenes.

Yes, you can explain about getting into the scene as late as possible and out of it as soon as possible. You can talk about what the characters want from each other and the character-based reason they won't give those things to each other.

You can talk about writing the scene backwards, or starting with the climax and working backwards, or starting too early and then trimming. All these are tools.

But is there something you can say about the mysterious core of the thing, which is just the writing of it?

What would you like to know about how to write a scene?

10:06 PM

2 Comments:

I'd like to know your take on the difference between writing a TV scene and a movie scene from the standpoint of converting beats to pages.

By  Anonymous, at 1:11 AM  

Do you feel it is better to have lots of single sentences, one for each action or event in the scene; or just a few strung together?
Ex: Bill enters the office.
Bill picks up a stapler.
Bill flings it at the window.
Bill leaves the room in disgust.
Or
Bill enters the office, picks up a stapler and flings it at the window. He turns on his heels and storms out of the room.

By  Anonymous, at 8:27 PM  

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