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Home » Archives » May 2008 » Learning From The Prose
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05/17/2008: Learning From The Prose


So did you see last night's new episode of Battlestar? This one, called Guess What's Coming to Dinner? was written by the amazing Michael Angeli, and I think it's one of the strongest episodes ever. Suspense, chills and singing!

In celebration, I'm going to use a line from his draft to demonstrate one of my favorite writing techniques. Check this out:

INT. GALACTICA - CORRIDOR
Athena, frantic, wild-horse eyes, bolts down another part of the corridor, no sign of...

ATHENA
HERA! HERA!


I've talked about this before, and this is a great example. And I'm not even talking about the stunning description of Athena's "wild-horse eyes".

See what he did structurally? By creating a sentence that bridges over the change in formatting ("...no sign of Hera"), he's making the inherently choppy structure of a script read more like prose, like a short story. This reader-friendly technique can be part of making your spec script feel enjoyable, not just as a description of a good potential filmed product, but in itself. Angeli's scripts are always literary objects in their own right and if the Battlestar scripts are ever published, I encourage you to devour them.

Lunch: Japanese noodle soup from a restaurant I hadn't been to before. Pork broth, cabbage, egg, noodles. Lovely.


 

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