MUSING 41 - (CONT’D)

MUSE: Reading scripts that don’t use (CONT’D) and wondering if it is necessary. 

MUSING:  It is considered proper script format to use (CONT’D) whenever a character’s dialogue continues after an action line. For example: 

TEACHER

Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road?

The classroom stares at their teacher in silence.

TEACHER (CONT’D)

Cause he didn’t have any guts!

No one laughs… 

The point of the rule is to make it easier for the reader to understand that the same character is speaking… though their name is technically enough to get that point across. I guess it’s especially useful if there are characters with similar names. But in most of the scripts I read this rule is not followed. When I asked Google if the rule has changed over the years, I found some online discussions saying that it is going out of fashion. It’s not an official ruling, but it does seem like many people in the industry don’t see it as necessary and therefore don’t care when scripts don’t use it. 

But another issue is at hand… even if some people don’t think it’s necessary, it still might be expected in scripts by emerging writers in order to see that they know the rules. In my opinion there are many things that successful/established writers can get away with that emerging writers can not. For example, long sections of action. We are told to have lots of white on the page (aka don’t have too many dense paragraphs of action). But there are plenty of successful films with long dramatic action sequences that came from dense scripts. When these scripts reach an agent or producer, those reading already expect to like the script and want to take it all in, even the dense parts. For emerging writers, however, are work us usually seen by readers for competitions or representation looking for new talent. Those readers are reviewing hundreds to thousands of scripts and therefore do not appreciate having to read through dense pages. The simpler and easier the read, the better. 

I also asked the #writingcommunity on Twitter their opinion on using (CONT’D). I explained that in my script SILENT CAL, I have multiple scenes with just one person speaking and it looks wrong to have so many (CONT’D) on the page. I only got one reply, which basically said not to use it if it looks wrong to me. To use my own judgement. And my judgement is saying to remove them. I have done so, and it looks a lot cleaner. But if a professional writer or Rep were to tell me to put them back, I can do so easily through Celtx. Thank goodness for screenwriting software! I can’t even imagine how frustrating the process would have been when typewriters were the norm.