Screenwriting surprises

For the screenwriting course I'm taking at Hopkins, I'm expected to bring in a page's worth of screenplay next week. Instead of writing something new (which I may end up doing, anyway) I'm returning to the Golem feature I wrote not long ago. Although last night's class was primarily concerned with format, much of what the instructor had to say had to do with screenwriting style. The structure stuff was fairly familiar to me (with a couple of details here and there which were new twists on old ideas.) The stylistic comments, primarily having to do with the kind of brevity and pace required of screenplays, is something I've never really encountered before, and the suggestions make a lot of sense. The idea is to make screenplays very lean, very to-the-point, with no wasted words. The more streamlined a screenplay, the easier it is to read, and the goal, of course, is to get people to read the thing and not toss it aside in exhaustion. (The next goal is to get them to like it...) So, in returning to that first page of the Golem feature, there's all sorts of writing there that seems more novel-like than is appropriate. I've been hacking at it for a bit this morning, and I like the pace and rhythm better already. I think that writing a second draft of this thing could be very informative for me. At the same time, for the class, I may want to consider writing something new. The course will eventually require of me that I write a new short, so I know I'll get to that, but it's very tempting to go back and rewrite the feature I've already written, just because of how much better it could be after a close revision.

-Arnon