Writing My First Script

My first homework for my script writing class is to write a three minute script in which someone discovers something. It's an interesting idea as it immediately puts you in the mind of a mystery and tempts you to make the discovery as shocking as you can. What was really interesting for me was the difference between writing a script and writing prose.

1. Description is minimal. So long as you've got an idea of what is going on in a scene the extra little details you have to put into your prose to make it more real. The world does that for you.

2. Dialogue must be efficient. I was once told that dialogue in a script should push the story along, delineate character, give necessary information, set up or pay off a joke or indicate a sub-text... and nothing else. Rather than let the character speak for themselves and ramble as they tend to do in my prose I had to carefully look at each line and determine its value.

3. What happens is all that matters. Camera angles are not for you to determine.
While you may have an idea of how a scene would look in your head you have to push that to one side in favour of what your characters say and do.

4. Timing is everything. The homework is to write a three minute script and I've been acting it out in my head and counting the seconds in each scene to give myself a better idea of what this actually means.

Edit: 5. The ever wonderful Scrivener makes formatting a script a breeze.

Also the other part of my homework (watching movies) has gone really well this weekend. I caught Black Sheep (everything you could want from a killer sheep movie), Superbad (the Citizen Kane of dick and fart movies) and Memento (still not sure I get it all).

I also discovered that writing a haiku in English is so totally not about syllables...