phone rings

Face it, Chad, the highly successful screenwriters aren't spending their time writing "how-to" books.
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
--G.B. Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists"
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HerzogisGod said:
Another quick question:

Character names within parenthesis:


John
(Turns to Pat)

or

John
(turns to pat)

Capitals or no?
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Proper nouns are always capitalized.

However, you shouldn't place action within parentheticals.

In the case of your example, you should really write "John turns to Pat" as a normal line of action.

Parentheticals should be rarely used, and only for specific directions about how a line should be read, directions like "(sarcastic)," "(bored)," "(sotto)," "(losing his temper)", etc.
 
Well, it could be (to Pat) in a case where there is more than one person there and he is speaking specifically to Pat.
 
Blaine said:
Well, it could be (to Pat) in a case where there is more than one person there and he is speaking specifically to Pat.
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But I would argue that if you need to resort to using something like "(to Pat)" in order to make sense of a line of dialogue, you haven't constructed your scene / characters / dialogue / action very well. The characters need to be more than just talking heads.
 
In this case, I personally would go with Blaine's:
(to Pat)

because turns to Pat reeks of actual direction.

Then again... the OP's question was whether or not a proper noun was CAP'ed, so technically, this discussion may be a bit...advanced.
 
agcohn said:
But I would argue that if you need to resort to using something like "(to Pat)" in order to make sense of a line of dialogue, you haven't constructed your scene / characters / dialogue / action very well. The characters need to be more than just talking heads.
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That may very well be, BUT a quick look found example of (to ___) in:
Man on Fire, Munich, Pulp Fiction and The Usual Suspects. Just 4 of the 5 I looked at. I didn't find an example of it in No Country for Old Men.
 
I see "action" written out in parenthesis all the time in professional scripts. It saves space, keeps the page cleaner
 
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