Script Writing - Tumblr Posts

Do you ever finish writing something you like and are just like "you'll never see the light of day :D"

Update! (Lps: Trout)

Guess who finished the first episode of Trout?

All I need to do is work on some finishing touches and I'll be finished with the script. Then I'll just have to figure out the sets and getting the pets needed

Guys I've gotten so far with this project pray that I get the first episode out plz 🥹

" Even standing from the sidelines , a villain in the role of a mere passerby can also change the course of the script ....Whether that's going to be towards the good or bad is  , however , upto the main cast! "

~animalina~

i tend to write scripts for videos that are either like mr. L's legendary chocolate or that one mario essay video i made. i really need someone else to be my writer because my humor does not reach anyone within this community

fps player mr. L

Check and Duke episode 1 script part 1

*Check’s alarm goes off, and he wakes up* Check: Morning Duke. Duke: Morning, what was your name again? Check: Duke, we've known each other for months. My name is check. Duke: Like a check mark? Check: Oh yeah, I mean, I guess. Duke:  I bet onion lady always has a clipboard to give you check marks when you do something right then. Check: Haha, nice. Wait, did you just pretend not to know my name so you can make that joke? Duke: yeeaahh. (Onion lady from the other room) Check, Duke get up. Check: Oh, I wonder if breakfast is ready. Duke: I hope not. Check: Why? Duke: I mean, her name is Onion Lady, so she's probably going to put onions in our food, and I'm allergic to that stuff. (They walk downstairs) Check: What is it onion, lady? Onion lady: Instead of breakfast today, we're going to be going to the new burger place/amusement park downtown. Check: Wait, really? Onion lady: I know it isn't a traditional breakfast, but I figured going to this place would be a good bonding experience for us. Duke: oooo I can't wait to order some onion rings! check: Wait, didn't you just say you were allergic to onions? Duke: Yeah, but they're just so good. One time I ate a whole restaurant's supply of onion rings and I was all puffy and swollen and since I didn't pay for them they actually beat the onion rings out of me so I ended up not dying. Check: Jesus Christ… onion lady: Well, that's certainly concerning, but it's good to know you're allergic to onions, Duke. I'll still be making them, though you'll just have to get used to it. Duke: Wait, what? Check: Onion lady, he's like severely allergic. Can't you just make stuff without onions? Onion lady: Oh gosh no silly I have to put onions and everything I make besides even if I didn't, it would still taste like onions because I secrete onion oils for my skin. Here, just feel. *She extends her hand and checks it. * check: ew. Onion lady: Anyway to the onion mobile! Check: we have that? Duke: it better not be made of onions. It then shows the dream repeater and his henchmen working in their lab. The dream repeater: Our subliminal messaging has worked, and they're coming. Henchmen: And by subliminal, you mean shoving coupons for our restaurant in their mailbox. Dream repeater: *sigh* Yes. I've made the perfect sauce with a combination of melatonin dream catcher beads ground up into a fine powder and magic dream mushrooms to put them in a dream hallucination. Henchmen: Okay, but why are you focusing on check and Duke? You have plenty of our customers for you to research dreams. Dream repeater: Because the people funding me want them dead, but recently I've been thinking I should do some research on them first. Think about the breakthroughs I'll make. (They drive and show up at the restaurant / amusement park) Onion lady: All right boys go explore. I'll be at the onion ring exhibit here if you need me. Duke: *gasp* Can I go! (He says excited) Check: no Duke, come on, let's go. Duke: Aw. (They walk into one of the main Burger shops) Check: we should probably get something to eat first since we haven't had breakfast. And remember, no onion rings. (They walk up to the counter and see two employees not wearing typical restaurant outfits but instead white long sweater robes with red stains on them.) The employees look disheveled and creepy. Check: Hi, I was wondering if I could get a number nine. Duke: And I'll have a number onion rings with extra onion rings. Check: Wait, they have a number onion rings? I mean, duke! No! Duke: Fine, I'll get a number nine as well. Also, what are those stains on your uniforms? The employee: Uhh, it's just ketchup. Duke: Then, can I taste it? Check: Duke, gross. Duke: What?! you shouldn't let good ketchup go to waste. Check: First of all, it's not good ketchup. Second of all, that's clearly blood. Duke: Wait, are you murderers then!? Check: Duke, I think it's just from the ground beef. Duke: Oh. The employees stare at them unsettlingly. Here are your orders. Make sure to enjoy, or we will be ordered to break your bones. Check: Oh my God.

Check and Duke episode script 1 part 2

(They sit down at a table.) Duke: Those employees were weirding me out, man. Check: yeah same but these burgers are pretty good. Duke: Yeah, I just wish I wasn't allergic to onions. Check: Hey, you want to know something? I'm allergic to Mint. Duke: Mint? Check: Yeah, Christmas is uh really hard for me. those damn Mall Santas always shoving the candy canes in my face. I didn't even know I was allergic for the longest time. Duke: How? Check: I thought the allergic reaction was just part of mint's natural intensity. Duke: damn I would expect that for me but you, tisk tisk tisk. Check: Oh crap I spilled some ketchup *check takes out a moist towelette package) let me just clean this up (all of the sudden the moist towlette starts moving and slips out of his hand.) Check: what the…? Moist towelette: Hey, get your hands off me! Duke: Whoa, it's alive. Moist towelette: You monster! using me and my brethren to clean up your messes! who Do You Think You Are?! Check: Sorry, I was just trying to clean up my ketchup. Moist towelette: Well, I've got news for you, buddy. we aren't here to clean up after you, humans. soon there I'll be a moist towelette Uprising and little moist towelettes will rule the world mwahaha- (check tears the moist towelette up and put some in his pocket) check: you know these could be some cool pets to keep. Duke: Yeah, let me get some (Duke Pockets, the moist towelettes.). Check: Anyway, let's go on a ride. Duke: Hell yeah. *They go up to an indoor roller coaster, and there is a man in a white robe with pins in his head and puppet strings on his body.) Dream repeater: Hello there, check and Duke Duke: How do you know our names? Dream repeater: I'm like Santa Claus. I'm magical! check: Oh, that checks out. Duke: Oh yeah. Dream repeater: Anyway, are you ready to take a ride down the world's best roller coaster!? Duke: But aren't those people first? (he points to people in front of them in line) *dream repeater pushes them out of the way) nope not anymore. person he pushed out the way: Oh, what the heck, dude? check: I don't know if those people seem like they were in front of the line for sure. dreamer repeater: Well, I think you're lying. check: You literally have pins sticking out of your head. I'm not really inclined to trust you, man. you're a stranger. Dream repeater: Oh, just enjoy your ride! (Check and Duke, get in and the ride and start to go. They see trippy visuals and traumatic imagery as they keep rollercoastering for hours.) Check: what the heck! this is so messed up. Why would anyone want to do this?! (he turns over to Duke but Duke is sliced in half) what the fuck just on!? (a giant blade comes down and cuts check in half holy shit all of a sudden he wakes up and he's back on the roller coaster riding with Duke) Duke are you okay!? Duke: I don't know one minute I was riding the roller coaster and the next you were dead! check: what!? you died first! Duke: No, we both die first! (Duke shoots check in the chest and then himself.  They respawn.) check: why would you do that Duke!? Duke: do what!? you're the crazy one. You started babbling on about conspiracies and then sliced my fingers off and ate them! Check: what's going on man!? (they then age rapidly and crumble up and then aged down back into their regular age) oh my God I feel like I'm going to throw up what the fuck is going on this feels so weird (all of a sudden they're in a haunted house) check: Duke you know there's always been room for one kid in onion lady's house. Duke: what are you talking about!? Check: I never liked you you weirdo. Duke: dude what are you babbling on about? you're hurting my feelings. Check: I will fucking end you and scoop out your brains just like how Jonathan and Rebecca died. Duke: who the hell is Jonathan and Rebecca!?

Check and Duke episode 1 script part 3

(Check stabs Duke, then all of a sudden, check is a little kid in a daycare and surrounded by giant potatoes and carrots in maid outfits) What's going on? (a lady with a blurry face comes in) It's okay to check. It’s time for your bottle.  (She shoves a bottle up his nose and sprays hot milk into his brains he's then cooked alive in the oven. And then cuts back to them on the roller coaster, and they're moving super fast and covered in throw up, and a giant hand comes out of the air and feeds them their own throw up. a voice from the heavens says “Good boys. It's okay, Mama will be back from the store soon.” Check is in tears." What's going on!? Duke: Why did you kill me? (Then in a disoriented state the Dream Repeater enters the room and Check and Duke are strapped to a chair with a device on their head) dream repeater: oh I can't wait to review this footage. (It then shows blurry imagery of check in a fire and his family getting killed and his electric sticks stabbing into him. Then, it shows a blurry vision of Duke gruesomely transforming into an animal for the first time and his scientist father leaving him. Days go by, and they constantly die over and over again. check finally breaks, and in the real world, electric sticks start electrocuting the headsets. Dream repeater: no no what are they doing?! Check and Duke fall out of their restraints. Check: what the hell have you been doing to us you fucking monster?!  (Duke turns into a wolf and bites the dream repeater making stuffing come out. the dream repeater screams and starts running. Check and Duke chase him and check tries zapping him with his electric sticks but the dream repeater goes deeper into the basement of this building and glitches out of existence for some reason leaving behind a giant voodoo doll (insert fight scene here.) Check and Duke walk out of there and see onion lady. check and Duke are in tears.) Both of them: can we go home?.. onion lady:Already? It's only been 20 minutes. Duke: So all those days… Check: it was only…oh God…

What program do you write your scripts in?

Google Docs, haha. It's definitely not the preferred or industry-standard way of doing it; it gives older writers at my program hives when I drop a Docs link in the homework folder. But I was raised on it and it's a great collaboration tool, so I haven't made the switch yet (and maybe never will? Actually probably will once Google inevitably starts charging money for it. But not quite yet!).

Through my school I have a free Final Draft license, so I use that for screenwriting (which has a lot more pesky formatting rules and things), but I'm not planning on buying it once my license expires because A. I don't write films that much and B. I can probably hard-code it into Google Docs for free.

If you're insane like I am and wanna use Google Docs for scriptwriting, here's some formatting tips under the cut:

We're gonna be using a page of the Ghost Story script to demonstrate!

I use Times New Roman because Deborah Brevoort recommended it as a more readable (and slightly more condensed) font than Courier. Your font should adapt to your style; I tend to write short, snappy lines with a lot of back-and-forth, so I use Times which is a common font style for comedy writers (despite not writing comedies.) If you write a lot of long monologues, Courier New might give you a better sense of how your script flows on the page. Basically, you want to space your writing so it comes out to 1 minute of performance time = 1 page of writing.

Scene headings are centered and in bold.

Stage directions that start a scene are left-aligned and in italics; in NAMT-standard style, these are center-margin aligned, like this:

But it's kind of your personal preference.

4. All names are centered and underlined

5. Any stage directions that take place during a scene and cue a line of dialogue are centered, in italics, and in parenthesis. If they can start eating whenever while they're talking, I'd put They start eating left-aligned between two lines of dialogue. However, it is important to me that Hao and Józef start eating before Hao says his next line, so I put it center-aligned.

6. When you get to a song it looks like this:

Basically, songs should be numbered and come after a stage direction (even something basic, like "He stands up.") The enter after the stage directions isn't kosher, it's a Google Docs thing I'll get into later. Then you close the parenthesis on the stage direction and put a page break. Songs should always start on a new page. This is because when you integrate the book and score, you can just take those lyric sheets out and put sheets of music in. Nifty!

7. Lyrics are always capitalized. When two people sing the same thing at the same time, you can put both their names over it:

But if they're singing something different, I usually put it in two columns (there is some debate among musical theater writers on what the proper notation for this kind of thing is. But columns are easy on Google Docs, so I use those. When I have four or more people singing different things on top of one another, I use a 1x4 table and make the lines between the cells invisible, haha.)

Google Docs Specific Formatting Stuff

Ok, so, if you're lazy like me and don't want to be hitting 800 buttons while you're writing to format everything correctly (and please, god, format while you're writing -- going back and doing it later sucks) you can use the Google Docs headings to format your writing! And it will even make a nice little outline for you!

So, the default of these settings (on the left) is useless and ugly. But mine looks like this (on the right!)

If you want yours to look beautiful and be useful like mine, you can format some kind of text the way you want it to (for example, I want all my names in 12 pt Times New Roman, centered and underlined.)

Then I go to some random heading and I hit "Update heading to match"

Now, anytime I type a name, I can go back to this menu and hit "Apply Heading 5"... and it will automatically make it centered, underlined, and 12 pt Times New Roman! I make one of these for all my categories of text: stage directions, song titles, scene headers, etc.

But, ok, you still have to open all those menus while you're writing. Well! See this thing?

All of these have keyboard shortcuts (the Windows ones will show up on a Windows computer). You can really easily hit them after each name/stage direction you type instead of fiddling around with font settings. You're a formatting machine!

And here's the bonus: If you do all this correctly, you can get a really nice outline like this one embedded in your document on the left (this is where the song titles on a new line come in; I make a heading style for them so they show up on the outline, but headings only show the start of the phrase that they are part of in the outline. Ignore the numbers being wrong, lol. There's a secret song 3 that we haven't released yet.)

And it's clickable, too-- like I can jump right to Your Face from the outline without having to scroll down 20 pages.

Is this all needlessly complicated and doing manually something Final Draft will do for you? Yes. But I'm set in my ways, and it's free, so maybe it'll be helpful to another Musical Theater writer out there working with someone else on Google Docs.

That's it! Thanks for the question.