May 2012
73 posts
Hi, I am writing a screenplay that has jumps in time, (It starts in the modern time and then jumps back 2 years and then it jumps forward again to present time.) What is the correct way of writing this in a script. Thanks
Hi Tom. There’s no absolute convention on this. The most frequent solution I’ve seen has been for a writer to add (FLASHBACK) or (PRESENT DAY) following a scene’s slugline but I’ve also seen “FLASHBACK:” right-justified as a Transition element as well. You could just as easily add it as Action text as long as the reader sees it.
My personal preference is to put it in the scene header. Info in the slugline is understood to be pure metadata that the reader takes in and acknowledges. Anywhere else in the script risks detracting from the narrative flow.
Does anyone have a theory about the ending? →
youtu.be
Personally, I like cultivating little mysteries in my life. I could ask Thomas for the answer — I think it does the video respect to instead wonder.
is there a way to export more info when i export a master catalog?
The Master Catalog contains everything that you put into it — if you want more info on the export, you may find you need to populate it first with either Character or Production info. If you want to customize the info gleaned during the export, you can click the “+” symbol in the Project Library and add a Catalog.
Conversely, maybe the info you’re looking for is in one of the reports that is generated by clicking the Reports sub-tab below the script editor.
How can I depict depict subject matter that is often accused of being trashy or lurid without being sensationalism or melodramatic? In telling my script ideas to people on the web and in real life I was warned against certain using subject matters like out of control teens and sexual infidelity because they are generally portrayed in a shallow manner that seeks to shock people. You once said on here that no idea is bad and that ideas must be executed properly.
Unfortunately, there’s no magic bullet answer to this — it’s like asking, “How do I write well?” You write and work to improve as you go. You learn from people, classes, texts and look critically upon your own work. I don’t know too many writers, regardless of their level of competence when they started out, who like re-reading their own material years later.
If you want to strengthen your foundation as a writer before you even begin to put pen to paper, then you’re looking for a textbook. Our Q&A can’t begin to cover a comprehensive foundation. There are a lot of great books out there but my personal favourite remains McKee’s Story. Story remains a personal fave of mine just because it wasn’t until my nth re-reading that subtext finally clicked for me and I saw a quantum jump in my own writing.
As for your portrayal of characters, just remember that even the most vicious, rage-fuelled villain tends to think he’s the hero in his *own* story. With exceptions, people don’t wake up and say, “Today, I really must make sure to do something extra evil today,” or “Hey, people are finally realizing how trashy I am!” They think they’re expedient. They think they’re pragmatic. They think that if they didn’t steal/rob/kill the [whatever] then someone else probably would have. Everyone thinks they are the 50-percentile that marks normal behaviour against which all other people are measured. It’s called “situational morality” and if you ever find yourself explaining your actions to someone with the words, “Well, you had to be there,” then surprise, you’re soaking in it.
There’s probably no better example of this in recent times than the series The Wire. If you haven’t watched it, please run-don’t-walk to your nearest long-form recorded media entertainment purveyor and call in sick for a couple days until you’ve seen it all.
When I finish my script, What can I do to promote it well? If I don't live in the U.S or Europe...?
Living in a conventional metropolitan area means less and less these days. It still matters if you want to break into TV but with movies, not so much.
A Google search alone would reveal a trove of destinations for increasing the profile of both your script and you as a scribe so I won’t list them here. Just do some due diligence to make sure the site has a good reputation and isn’t offering to unburden you of your money.
A great, free starting point for a lot of writers is Trigger Street. It’s a friendly, robust community that’s been around for over a decade now.
Would it be a bad idea to make a bogus claim of child abuse the premise of a comedy plot? I came up with such an idea. My dad told me that such subject matter would be poorly received if played comically. Although, I kind of disagree because there was an episode of Family Guy where Meg pretended that Stewie was her baby and this led to him getting taken my Children's Services. I also want to know how can dark comedy handle serious issues without belittling the issues.
There’s no litmus test for good ideas before they’re executed. You could aim for A Modest Proposal and end up with an episode of Jackass. You won’t know until you write it.
I am working on a screenplay; sometimes on my laptop, sometimes on my tablet. When on the laptop, using the desktop app, I click Services > Save to Celtx, I see a list of my projects so I can select the current one and save the updated version. I created this project May 7 and have updated it many, many times, but the "Modified" column on the "save to Celtx" form still shows May 7. It should update so I can see quickly what the last update was, and verify that my save from my tablet succeeded.
Yep, it should. If you look at your project in your account’s Resources tab and select Versions in the project’s context menu, do the versions reflect accurate time/date stamps? There should be a version for every time you click Save to Celtx or sync the script on your tablet.
Is it a bad idea to make a teen-targeted piece of media dark in tone on the grounds that teens have enough to deal with? My dad said that if I write something about teens and targeted towards teens, I shouldn't be too dark in tone. The reason being that teens already have enough bad tings in their lives and hardships and struggles and challenges and they would be alienated by a show or book or movie or whatever that depicts overly dark subject matter/tone. Do you agree?
No, I don’t agree. Movies, when done well, are one of the best means we have of putting thorny issues of life into perspective. Teens can benefit from this as much or more than most. The challenge is that unlike novels, movies don’t handle inner monologues well, so you need to show dark content and hardships instead of revealing the character’s meditation on the subject.
Many years ago, I took a class on writing children’s literature. One of the few things I remember from this class was that if your story has nothing but happy-go-lucky scampering children from nuclear families, with loving siblings and happily hetero parents, adoring grandparents, friendly neighbours, safe streets and the like, you are actually doing a disservice to kids. It’s patronizing. Kids grow up in bad apartments in bad neighbourhoods. Maybe they’re in a good home but it’s a single-parent or same-sex family. Maybe they’re exposed to criminality or tragedy in one form or another at a young age. It happens. Stories that paint an unrealistically happy utopian life that presumes sameness for all kids abuses all kids’ self-confidence and self-esteem by making all kids feel like outsiders.
Kids and teens deserve good stories. There is no “you must be this happy to enjoy this ride” sign at the front gate.
I have a question about narration. I know that in a screenplay narration should be kept as minimal as possible and should add to the story without telling the audience things they can already see. How do I format narration in a script and how do I combine it with the actions I'm writing?
This is usually handled by either having an existing character (or one named NARRATOR) speak and appending “(V.O.)” after the character’s name to imply that the speech is voice-over. We use V.O. as opposed to O.C. for those occasions when we wish to indicate that a character is speaking off-camera.
Someone can correct me on this but I believe in Jim Uhls’ screenplay adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club, Edward Norton’s character was just named “Jack” since—
Well, even 12.5 years since it’s theatrical release, I’m going to respect the spoiler.
If I make changes to a script on my iphone and then decide that I don't like them, but they've already been saved on my phone, how can I prevent them from syncing to the cloud?
No problem. Every time you sync, a new version is saved to your cloud account. If you want to undo a version, just log into your cloud account, open the script’s context menu and click Versions. Find the last version you like — they’re listed by time/date stamp — and click Restore.
Hey, while working on a piece on my iPad, I hit something and it wiped everything out. A) how did this happen and b) how do I get it back or is it gone forever? Thanks -James
Wacky. The fastest way I can think of erasing a script would be to Command-A and then delete. We don’t have a “delete everything” button for the same reasons real-life supervillains don’t actually have big, red , self-destruct buttons. It’s not a button you want someone to actually push.
You can log in to your cloud account at celtx.com and look at the versions that have been synched. Depending upon how recently you last synched your script before it disappeared on you, you should be able to recover much of it.
When sharing a Celtx Project over the Cloud services, my group of 4 has already run into several save overwrite situations when two or more people were in the Project, making changes to different items (I was changing script, Matt was changing Master Catalog, and Lela was working on the schedule). Things got messed up.How can we sync elements in a project? I can't see any way to take a Master catalog from one project to another, nor the schedule, storyboard, or anything that can't be copied.
Unfortunately, we don’t yet have the capability of adding simultaneous editing by multiple collaborators. We’re a small studio and can’t throw tons of human brain muscle at solving this problem the way Google has.
Until then, there’s an onus on teams of collaborators to communicate who has the project at a given time. You can use the Comment Stream next to a project for this purpose. ”I’ll be editing until the end of the weekend,” or “Can I take a crack at it next guys?” That kind of thing.
Think of it like a library book that you check in and check out. Just leave notes for each other and you won’t have to worry about overwriting someone else’s work.
I told you once before that I once accused the film "The Parent Trap" of being implausible; I feel that I asked the question wrong. Namely, the twins more likely would have been angry at their parents for splitting them up, never telling them of each other and never visiting or having any kind of correspondence with the twin that didn't live with them. People told me I was wrong because the film is fiction and targeted towards children and therefore, doesn't need to be logical; do you agree?
I guess so. I strongly believe that you should never let logic and reality get in the way of telling a good story.
I'm seeing in my account when I log in, that I can share my script(s) with up to 10 people. I thought you could only share with the $5/mo charge account type??
The paid subscription service is a legacy service called Celtx Studio. This service costs starting at $5/month depending upon how many sub-seats you need for additional users to your Studio. This service is not aging well and is gradually being phased out but not before we have a comparable tier of the new cloud service that offers all of Studio’s current functionality and more.
To sum up: Celtx Studio — old and fee-based. Celtx Services — new and free. Sharing and collaboration is baked into both.
