Portraying inner thoughts & sex scenes

G

GeorgeKaplan

New member
I'm a newbie who's writing a screenplay based on his first novel, Only Tim Sent Flowers, who needs advice on a couple of topics (and probably more). Tookie, my protagonist is an undiagnosed Aspie woman who says what she actually thinks only when angry, so I'm using voice overs for her to communicate them to the viewer. I need her sex scenes to be fairly explicit for the humor and angst to come out but I don't want it to be pornographic. I would appreciate constructive criticism on the attached scene.

TIA

George
 

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Keep it real - feel what yer writing - why would it come out pornographic?
If you wrote a novel about the subject matter - you obviously did yer research.
What's the reality of a woman like that in that situation. It might be graphic but hey that's life - if yer worried that a studio will think it's pornographic - then I don't know what to tell ya.
 
also as far as portraying inner thoughts - do you really need VO? Sure Scorsese uses it all the time - but a good actor will register thoughts without words. One of the great things about film is that it does register thought.
 
GeorgeKaplan said:
I'm a newbie who's writing a screenplay based on his first novel, Only Tim Sent Flowers, who needs advice on a couple of topics (and probably more). Tookie, my protagonist is an undiagnosed Aspie woman who says what she actually thinks only when angry, so I'm using voice overs for her to communicate them to the viewer. I need her sex scenes to be fairly explicit for the humor and angst to come out but I don't want it to be pornographic. I would appreciate constructive criticism on the attached scene.

TIA

George
Click to expand...

A couple of things... first I'd recommend going to this site William Martell and reading a number of Bill's entries on scriptwriting. He also has a number of e-books on Amazon, such as Visual Storytelling for $3.99 cheap... which may give you some information on scriptwriting and various ways to deal with such things as 'voice over' vs 'visual telling'... etc.

William Martell also posts occasionally to this forum, and his books/seminars seem 'reasonable' in a world where many 'gurus' charge much more.

Voice Over is 'dangerous' in that motion pictures are a visual medium. The danger is turning the visual medium into Illustrated Radio.

There are of course successful examples of narrator either 1st person Participant, that is 'subjective', or 3rd Person 'objective'.

For example "Shawshank Redemption"(1994) is 1st person participant, Morgan Freeman is a supporting character and he gives narration.
An example of 3rd person 'objective', would be "Lemony Snicket A Series of Unfortunate Events"(2004)

I personally avoid much dialog and voice over in my short scripts. I tend to be very visual, and try in so far as possible to tell the story visually.

In the case where a character has an inner monolog which works for a book, the question is how to represent that visually.

I don't have a ready answer for your particular scenario. I presume by the term 'aspie' you are referring to someone who exhibits some set of behaviors in the Asperger's constellation of behaviors.

I'd list out those behaviors that the character exhibits, then ask how can those be represented in film.

In terms of some technical details, I read the first action chunk of your script example and I'll make some suggestions. Since I only do short films, and haven't been able to get a group together produce much... you can take it as that... but I do read as a 'director', in the sense of asking my self 'would I take this script and make a film from it?'.

----- Original ----

[scrippet]
INT. OF ADAM’S CAR – NIGHT

Adam steals looks at Tookie as he drives her back to his apartment, probably confused whether his date was the girl who flirted with him at the office or the inscrutable woman he had just bought an expensive dinner. Tookie sat silent, looking straight ahead the entire drive from the restaurant.
[/scrippet]

Film writing is always in the present tense. So, while you write 'Adam...looks'... you have 'Tookie sat'... Further, you refer to some past events, which would be better be done 'visually'.

So, here's my 'version' as a idea...

[scrippet]
INT. ADAM'S CAR - NIGHT

Adam glances at Tookie.

ADAM
So, how was dinner?

Tookie stares straight ahead.

ADAM
How did you like the sawdust on the floor. Sort of highclass slumming it?

Tookie remains silent.

TOOKIE(V.O.)
God, how come these things get so awkward. Do we have to do this chitchat, when we just want to f*#k like bunnies.

Tookie squirms in her leather bucket seat. The leather makes a squeaky FART sound.

Tookie freezes.

Adam stares into the oncoming black roadway.
[/scrippet]
 
GeorgeKaplan said:
I'm a newbie who's writing a screenplay based on his first novel
Click to expand...

Why?

I can think of a couple of reasons why you might not want to:

1) Novel/prose writing requires a specific skill set, and screenwriting requires a different specific skill set. Sure, there's some overlap, but that's like saying driving a Formula 1 racecar and an 18-wheel Big Rig don't require different skills. And it's very unlikely that the same person will be able to perform both skill sets at a professional level. So you would most likely be better off selling the screen Rights to a screenwriter (or producer).

2) Are you sure this story would make a good movie? The different media have different strengths, weaknesses, and conventions. The vast majority of stories are not equally well suited to being told in both.

I'm using voice overs
Click to expand...

This is a huge red flag, as I opined previously.

Also, remember that, above all else, your primary goal is to engage the audience, to involve them in the story. By it's nature, (expository) voice over is passive; the audience just sits back and listens to it. But if you show them something, the audience must now figure out what it means; they become an active participant, involved in the story.

If you're familiar with the sayings, "a picture is worth a thousand words" and "actions speak louder than words", keep in mind that film is 24 pictures a second, and shows actions better than any other medium--better than "real life" even. So if a filmmaker is relying solely on words, s/he is not using the medium of film to its full potential. That would be radio.

Movies should move! Heck, when movies first started, they didn't even have sound!

So you should find a way to convey the information in the VO via actions. Especially since this will free up the dialog (and VO, if you then choose to add one) to convey other things. This will make your writing both more effective and more affective.

And lastly, the first, most basic "rule" of screenwriting: write only what the audience can see and hear. But in just the first sentence of your piece:

"Adam steals looks at Tookie as he drives her back to his apartment, probably confused whether his date was the girl who flirted with him at the office or the inscrutable woman he had just bought an expensive dinner."

How is the audience going to know where Adam and Tookie are going?

"probably confused"? Is he confused or isn't he? How is an actor going to play "probably confused"?

Even if Adam is definitely confused (which I can see an actor playing; although it would be better still if you came up with a single concise action that conveyed Adam's confusion, if for no other reason than it would tell us something about the character since confusion can manifest differently in different people), there's absolutely no way an actor is going to be able to play "confused whether his date was the girl who flirted with him at the office or the inscrutable woman he had just bought an expensive dinner"

HTH - M
 
GeorgeKaplan said:
Tookie, my protagonist is an undiagnosed Aspie woman who says what she actually thinks only when angry, so I'm using voice overs for her to communicate them to the viewer.
Click to expand...

Why not let the actress playing the part... act? If you've got to use a VO to 'splain it to the audience, something is wrong. At least give the actress a chance, if she doesn't perform at a sufficient level, you can add VO to rescue the scene as a Plan B, but leave the VO out of the screen play. So that she knows she's go to show the emotions and can't rely on your VO. Just sayin'.

I went through a period of years (a decade or more?) where I didn't read fiction written by women writers, because very few could or did write male characters that felt right. They were always "women in suits" instead of men. My wife (English major, writes) has the same but opposite complaint. She finds the vast majority of women characters written by men to be "men in dresses". I'm not telling you this to piss you off, I'm telling you this to acknowledge that what you are trying to do is indeed difficult. My suggestion is that you get a woman writer to consult, especially on the sex scenes, even if you think you've nailed it.

BTW, Asperger's Syndrome was dropped from the DSM a few years ago. It's now referred to simply as autism spectrum disorder. The "Aspie" slang is outdated.
 
I have to echo one of BitMaestro's points -- there are a great many wonderful books that simply do not make good movies. And you've hit the very reason why -- because in a book, the reader can know exactly what people are thinking, feeling, planning, in their minds. There is no truly effective way to do this in movies. Certainly not the massive amounts of it that will likely be needed to truly represent Tookie as a character.

Is it possible? I don't know....maybe. But to pull it off would, I believe, require a truly extraordinary screenwriter. Not a writer -- a screenwriter. One with lots of experience and talent. Finding someone who could write this and make it work for a general movie audience would be very, very hard.

I have no doubt that the book is a very interesting read. But that might be all it can be.
 
Read "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and ask yourself how in hell anyone could try to make a movie of that book...

And then see the movie. They're two radically different experiences, and two of my favorite pieces of culture or media or whatever. They're the same story, they convey the same things, but in absolutely different ways, and each stands alone on its own.

It can be done - but we're talking two masters here (Milan Kundera vs. Philip Kaufman).
 
J1Clark & others,

Your comments have been most helpful. Switching tenses unconsciously is one of my major failings. I'm working on it but, as evidenced here, I've a long way to go yet. Martell has been most helpful. I've eliminated all but one of the voice overs to let the viewer surmise what she thinks by watching her actions. I created a problem for myself by plucking a scene out of the middle where the viewer needs to know what happened before between these characters to have a context for this scene. I'm rewriting away with your suggestions in mind but am not including fart sounds out of personal preference.

My screenplay may turn out to be awful but writing it forces me to think more visually, something that may improve my fiction writing as well.
 
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First 20 pages wo voice overs

First 20 pages wo voice overs

Attached is a file containing the first 20 pages of the script. It's last scene immediately precedes the previous script. It has zero voice overs. I've tried to be as visual as possible.

Thanks for the advice on the previous attempt.
 

Attachments

Good screenwriting is not only visual storytelling. The greatest contribution made by cinema to the art of storytelling is the edit. With it one can create juxtapositions, and imply connections. An edit directs the audience, and the screenwriter can indicate this simply by using each individual sentence to represent a single shot (or at least a visual punctuation).

An example:

Diane Keaton character runs down a hallway in a large auditorium.
She is not allowed entry into a big meeting hall filled with hundreds of men.
She peeks in the doorway to listen in.
A man on the stage speaks about the government, the proletariat, large corporations and the exploitation of the working class.
He asks for Warren Beatty's character to explain why those in power do what they do, and goes on in his question for some time.
Beatty stands, clears his throat, and says it's for the money, then shrugs and sits down.
Keaton stares at him.

That's the opening scene to the movie REDS (a lovely, lovely film, by the way). Each sentence above represents a shot. Each sentence on its own tells very little, as they are just moments, incidents. But placed against one another they create juxtaposition and they tell a story. That story is much more than the sum of its parts. The individual moments are plot. The actions are character. The juxtapositions are the real story. REDs is a movie about a stubborn man with idealistic beliefs so strong that they are both his strength and his downfall, the woman who is fascinated by him so that she falls in love with him and his passion, all told over the backdrop of the Communist Revolution. And all of that is established perfectly in the opening two minutes of the film.

Screenwriting is a skeleton, an essence to the structure of a movie. It serves a very different purpose from that of a novel.
 
Revised version of Tookie's First Seduction

Revised version of Tookie's First Seduction

Thanks, Mitch. I hadn't seen this done before. It looks like a good way to save on the page count when you don't want the actors to say the exact words you have in mind. A revised version is attached.
 

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Decided not to chime in. Keep at it. You'll get the results you're after.
 
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Guys, we do have a "no pornography" rule here, which we take quite seriously. Posts had been deleted previously; I just deleted more.

You can talk about writing sex scenes in legit movies without getting graphic. General advice is fine; specific examples skirt the line.

This is no different than the prohibition against posting nudity.
 
If that was me sorry! David can you PM me and explain which bits were over which line? It can't have been all the message? None of which I thought was pornographic.

Besides this project seems quite an interesting film that is trying to make some interesting points.

[Edit] I would play devils advocate and ask what the definition of Pornography is but life is far too short especially as this is an international forum and what passes for mid afternoon TV in one country would not get screened at any time of day in another country.
 
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