Ted DeMarsh and attentive students at Port Stanley Library

What do you do when a professional screen writer decides to visit and is interested in meeting with other writers? Well, if you're the Port Stanley Library you promptly set up a limited-enrollment adult seminar session on screen script writing.

When screen writer Ted DeMarsh noticed the festival theatre in town he was sure there must be a lot of aspiring writers living in Port Stanley and probably writing plays for the theatre. He inquired about other writers at the library and it didn't take long for Carol Farr to come up with the idea for an adult seminar on screen writing for TV and movies.

On Tuesday, July, 13, 2010 the small but full seminar group attentively listened while Ted talked about the form of screen scripts and some of their finer intricacies. Drawing on movies everyone had seen to illustrate his points, Ted described the critical timing of what he calls the incitement point - the event that causes everything else which happens in the movie.

The basic form of a screen script has three acts - a beginning, a middle and an end. It also has one central character. The beginning is about 20 minutes in length and sets the story line. About 13 minutes into the movie an event happens which cause the central character to respond and everything else in the movie flows from that event. This is the incitement point. All the other characters in the movie spend the rest of the movie supporting the central character as he/she overcomes various obstacles resulting from the incitement point to reach the final conclusion, The second act is all about the trials and tribulations of getting to the final act, the end of the movie. The final act is also about 20 minutes in length in which all the loose ends get tied up and everything comes together.

For example, in Lord of the Rings, the incitement point is when Frodo steps up and tells Gandalf and the Elfin King that he will take the ring to the mountain for its destruction. The role of all the other characters in the movie is to help or hinder Frodo in accomplishing his mission.

There are also specific ways in which screen scripts are formatted. Each scene begins with an opening statement of whether it is inside or outside, where it is and the time of day. There will be a prose paragraph which sets the scene and describes what the characters are supposed to be doing. The name of the character will be centred over the dialogue for that character as it comes up. The name of each character in the scene will be capitalized only the first time that character appears in the scene. The rest of the time the character's name will not be capitalized. This is for the benefit of wardrobe. Wardrobe scans the scene looking for capitalized names to know who will be in that scene and what wardrobe requirements they need to meet for it. Shooting directions and directions for the characters are not written into the scene. It is up to the director and the actors to bring the script to life in specific ways.

DeMarsh recommended several books to learn the finer aspects of screen script writing and the ways in which it must be formatted. If you want to sell a script you need an agent, and agents will not even look at a script which is not properly formatted. A novice screen script writer who hopes to sell a script needs to produce a well written script, complete with all the dialogue to even have it considered. Agents see so many scripts they can tell within the first page whether it is a good script or a bad script, and they do not waste their time on bad scripts. DeMarsh also discussed how to find an agent, recommending the Writers' Guild website as a great starting point.

DeMarsh answered many questions on the transitions from plays to screen scripts and from novels to screen scripts. He explained the differences between the American and Canadian markets, working in them and pitching a script in them. As could be expected, the seminar ran a little overtime and he left his audience with theses four reference books to learn more to develop their craft as screen writers: Story by Robert McKee on the art of developing the story line and telling the story; Screen Writing by Syd Fields for all the intricacies of proper formatting in screen script writing; Making a Good Script Great by Linda Seger; and The Comic Toolbox by John Vorhaus on how to make it funny.

Kudos to the Port Stanley Library for bringing such great adult programming to Port Stanley.