Day 17 Assignments

[Lisa Duffy]

Lisa’s Description

What I’ve learned doing this assignment is the importance of keeping your reader engaged – riveted to the page – through cleaning up unnecessary or boring descriptions. This was very helpful to me.

Logline: A homeless teenage orphan, chasing her dream of becoming the next Adele, must survive the streets of L.A. and the pursuit of the criminal who killed her family.

DESCRIPTIONS THAT NEED FEEDBACK

I’ve always heard that a writer shouldn’t direct from the script, but in the two scene descriptions that follow, I felt it was important to give the reader some perspective. I would love to hear from my classmates if you think I did this correctly without adding direction.

1. A young man’s hand knocks on the regal front door of Clare’s beautiful home.

2. EXT. PHILADELPHIA MILLS MALL – DAY

Curled, shoulder-length blonde hair. A zipper that runs down the length of the ultra-tight pink dress. Hips that swish back and forth as long legs supported by high heeled-sandals click their way down the polished floors of the mall. It’s Crystal Cumbee, the same woman who struck up a conversation with Christian at the bar a few nights before, toting her clutch purse and a pink Victoria’s Secret bag dangling from her arm. She heads toward the mall’s double doorway and exits. Looking both ways, she steps off the curb and clicks her way through the parking lot heading for the charcoal gray Dodge Charger straight ahead.

Thanks so much for any feedback you can offer 🙂

[Marian]

Marian Redmann Description – Shark Abyss

What I learned from this assignment is that sometimes I can think as much as I want… I can’t find a better solution. But the doubt remains if it can’t be done better…

LINE: An intimate moment.

NEED: Two people embrace intimately. I want to give some time to this moment and not write: “They hug. – A beat.” Maybe there is a better description of this intimate moment?

LINE: FREDDY, the shark, is irritated, turns, and starts circling Lisanna.

NEED: Sharks circle potential prey before attacking. Here the shark doesn’t know yet if it should attack, but it already looks very threatening. Is this the best way to show it?

LINE: Lisanna fishes out a packet of pills in her pocket and swallows one unnoticed.

NEED: I want to depict Lisanna secretly fingering in her bag. But so inconspicuously that no one notices.

LINE: An inflatable boat with Lisanna, Julian, and two other men, HANNO and DIRK, on their way to the diving site.

NEED: Here I have 2 people we know and two new characters. Is this the shortest and most concise way to portray that we have these 4 people on the boat?

LINE: Are Lisanna’s nerves going crazy in this cramped atmosphere?

NEED: It’s a question that the reader is offered to ask himself. I think it’s legitimate to just bring it up like that and also effective. Maybe there’s something that’s not a direct question in the reader’s mind?

LINE: Julian looks tense.

NEED: A question that comes up for me more often. How do I succinctly portray that someone is tense or under pressure without falling into more clichés, like, he’s breaking out in a sweat, etc.?

LINE: Lisanna is panicking and gets rid of her compressed air cylinder.

NEED: Lisanna is panic-stricken, so she can no longer think clearly, acts instinctively, and is filled with anxiety. Is there a better word/action for this?

LINE: Lisanna rushes through the hold.

NEED: Very difficult. Here I have a room full of water and Lisanna is swimming across the room as fast as she can. I’ve already used this phrase (“swims as fast as she can”). Sprinting implies that she is walking. But it has to be something you can do in the water, like paddling. Like: “Lisanna paddles wildly through the hold.

Thank you very much for your feedback!

marian.redmann@t-online.de