If you think twice, you don’t have to say it twice.
Just five years ago, if you faded out on page 120, you were still shy of the red zone. Now, opening a hundred and twenty page script makes me moan with inconsolable self-pity and drop my head on my keyboard.
109 looks like fighting weight. But Winter’s Bone wasn’t even 90. The needle keeps creeping down, like the body fat percentage of a fourteen year-old French lingerie model. One way to save space in your screenplay is by identifying and eliminating instances of characters repeating in dialogue anything we already know.
We Already Know This. WAKT. It is a time-wasting crime. Like a drunk at a party telling you, again, that he just got back from Coachella.
But what choice do you have? Adam has to tell Bob what he just learned from Chris. How else would Bob find out and do the next plot thing? Use a technique. A popular one, because it’s easy, is to start that necessary scene with Bob’s reaction to Adam, “NOOOOO!!!” followed very quickly by a decision to do something about it, “I’LL EAT HIS CHILDREN IN FRONT OF HIM!” It’s not as if anyone would be mystified by why Bob is upset. It’s been established.
Do it visually with Adam’s whisper into Bob’s ear, and Bob’s sidelong glance at Chris on the other side of the room. Or end the scene at the moment before Adam confesses the big news to Bob. Then cut directly to Bob acting, preferably in a hair-raisingly dramatic way, on the information.
Finding creative ways around telling us twice opens opportunities. If you are tempted to move into a scene whose sole purpose is to catch your characters up with stuff we already know, make it into a scene where that has just happened and turn that dead space into story.
And this goes for more mundane transfers of information, too. Once we hear the plan to infiltrate the zombie cave, we don’t need Sarge repeating the instructions to Brooklyn and Flats. Or Chloe telling Kelly and Olivia on two separate occasions that her dad won’t let her date Ben because he’s too poor, after we’ve already heard it from her dad. Kelly can ask why she’s not going to the prom and Chloe and say “Because my dad is a narrow minded bigot!” of course, but once we know, we know. Why dwell?
Fines are doubled if you tell backstory twice.
This does not apply to a device like the one in Silver Linings Playbook when Pat repeats several times that he is working to get his wife back. That isn’t story information, this repetition in dialogue is a symptom of his mental illness and indicates that he is delusionally holding onto the past.
109 is a lot closer than it looks. Cut your scenes around telling us twice. Use action and reaction to show that Bob heard about his wife. Forward momentum is a lot more interesting.
It’s just a rule. There are exceptions. Especially if it’s funny. But. For straight story information: once we know it, think twice before you tell us again.