CONTINUED, (MORE) and Other Such Nonsense

CONTINUED, (MORE) and Other Such Nonsense
During your travels, you'll see a lot of scripts that do this:
Waller emerges, moving toward the exit. They exchange looks,
Waller's face made of stone.
(CONTINUED)
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27.
CONTINUED:
As he exits, a severe woman in a severe suit pokes her head out
of the doorway from which Waller just emerged.
The word "CONTINUED" is used to tell us that the scene continues through to the next page. Somebody must think we're idiots, because this is fairly obvious anyway. The use of "CONTINUED" is completely unnecessary. Unless you're writing an episodic television script (and this report is meant for feature screenplays only), don't do it. If you do, I may personally have to hunt your script down and attack it with White-Out.
Next, we come to slightly more controversial ground: "(MORE)" and its companion in crime, "(CONT'D)." You'll often find you have a long stretch of dialogue but you've run out of page somewhere in the middle of it. The conventional wisdom is to break that dialogue up as follows:
LISA
I'm just going to ramble for awhile
so that Rob can make his point. When
a speech is about to overlap to
another page, it's common practice to
(MORE)
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2.
LISA (CONT'D)
put "more" and "cont'd" as illustrated
to let everyone know that I'm still
talking.
The reason for these tags is as obvious as it is pointless. You can keep them if you want. But here's what I do:
LISA
Rob, on the other hand, doesn't bother
with such things. He prefers to leave
both "more" and "cont'd" out of the
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3.
equation altogether. In fact, he doesn't
even repeat my name at the top. Imagine
that!
You don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure out that Lisa is still talking. Why clutter up the page with more useless garbage? This technique goes against conventional wisdom, however. I recently spoke with another authority on this matter who thinks I'm dead wrong about it. He feels that the readers need a name at the top of every block of dialogue to help them keep things straight. So, to be safe, you might want to stick with convention in this matter.
Another interesting formatting technique I've come across that assumes the reader is minus a few brain cells looks like this:
LISA
What do you expect me to think?
He just stares at her, says nothing. A beat.
LISA
(continuing)
Well? Are you gonna answer me
or not?
What part of the above do you think is completely unnecessary? Here's a clue: we can see by the dialogue cap that Lisa is continuing to speak -- so why the unnecessary parenthetical?
What the Heck Is a "Beat?"
This is a common question I hear. I'll explain it simply. A "beat" is Hollywood lingo for a pause. Nothing more, nothing less.
LISA
(beat)
You've gotta be kidding me.
You can use a "short beat," a "long beat," or just a plain old everyday "beat."
INT./EXT. Revisited and "b.g."
I've come back to these two lovelies because, as I mentioned earlier, I find abbreviations distracting.
Around about the fourth or fifth script I wrote, I decided to throw caution to the wind and stopped using "INT." and "EXT." altogether. My thinking was simply that these particular abbreviations are more distracting than they're helpful.
So, instead of putting "INT. NICK'S BEDROOM," I wrote "INSIDE NICK'S BEDROOM." When I realized that saying "INSIDE" NICK'S BEDROOM was pointless -- because where else would Nick's bedroom be but inside? -- I shortened it to simply, "NICK'S BEDROOM."
For "EXT." I followed the same rule. I'd either write "OUTSIDE THE HOUSE," or, if we were obviously outside, I'd write something like, "THE STREET."
Take a look at Appendix C and you'll see what I'm talking about. Now compare that to the more standardized version of the same page in Appendix A. The differences are subtle, aren't they? Not enough to arouse suspicion, but enough to smooth the flow and allow for a more pleasant reading experience.
Now we come to "b.g." -- which stands "background."
It's used like this: "People mill in b.g." -- which means you've got a bunch of people wandering around who aren't really part of the scene, but are there to keep things lively.
This, like most other such abreviations, is left over from the old, old days and I've never quite understood why anyone would want to use it except perhaps to save a little space. Use it if you like, but why not simply put "People mill in the background?"
FADE IN and FADE OUT
Some use "FADE IN" at the beginning of their scripts:
FADE IN:
EXT. HOUSE - NIGHT
This seems to be quickly becoming a thing of the past. I don't think I've ever used this in a feature screenplay. Put it in, leave it out -- it's your choice.
"FADE OUT," however, is still commonly used at the very end of the script and sometimes between scenes as a transitional device.