Script Draft Notes
This vault holds notes, excerpts, and workshop material. The canonical script file lives separately.
Draft History
| Version | Date | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outline v1 | — | In progress | Story bible complete; beat sheet drafted |
| Draft 1 | — | Not started | — |
Format
Software: Final Draft, Highland 2, or Fountain (.fountain plaintext)
Standard format: US screenplay format, Courier 12pt
Target length: 80–95 pages
Writing Principles for This Script
The Unsaid Rule
Characters in this film do not say what they mean. Every line of dialogue should be tested: is this what this person would actually say, or is this what the scene needs to communicate? If the latter, find what the character would say instead and let the scene communicate around it.
The Restraint Rule
The script does not use parenthetical directions to signal performance. No (softly), (frightened), (feeling the weight of the house). The performance is in the words and actions, or it is not there. Trust the actors and the director.
The Ambiguity Rule
No action line in the script may confirm the supernatural. If an action line describes something happening in the house that would constitute a supernatural event, revise it until it is ambiguous. The camera will interpret the ambiguity. The audience will interpret the camera.
The Duration Rule
Scenes that require duration — the telling, the long basement scene, the mirror scene — should be written at their actual intended duration, not compressed. If a scene runs 4 pages because it needs to hold for 4 minutes, write 4 pages. The script is not trying to be economical about these scenes.
Scene Notes
Scene: The Telling (Alexis and Kendrie)
Intent: The film’s central dramatic event. Alexis shares the full history of the deaths. She tells it in her own time, in her own way. Kendrie receives it.
Draft concerns:
- Do not over-write Alexis’s dialogue — the more economical and direct, the more devastating
- The white space between Alexis’s sentences is as important as the sentences
- Kendrie’s response should be minimal — she is receiving, not processing out loud
- The scene should end with Alexis lighter and Kendrie heavier — the transfer of weight is the scene
Opening action line attempt:
ALEXIS says nothing for a while. KENDRIE waits.
Scene: The Long Basement Scene
Intent: Kendrie alone in the basement with the knowledge Alexis gave her. Duration. Nothing happens.
Draft concerns:
- This scene has no dialogue
- Action lines should describe the physical reality of the space and of Kendrie in it, with complete literalness
- No poetic description of what the house “feels like” — describe what a camera would see
- The scene ends when Kendrie decides to leave. She decides. No external prompt.
Constraint: No event occurs in this scene that could not be filmed in a real basement with a real person standing in it.
Scene: Charlize’s Break
Intent: The scene where Charlize’s certainty fails her. She is alone. The film watches.
Draft concerns:
- What does Charlize do when she cannot explain her own experience? She does not call anyone. She does not research. She sits with it, which is extremely difficult for Charlize.
- This scene may be almost wordless — or it may have Charlize speaking to herself, trying to explain it to herself, failing
- The scene should not be melodramatic; it should be the specific, quiet terror of losing access to your own tools
Dialogue Workshop
Samples and experiments — not final draft.
The moment Kendrie tries to tell Charlize:
Draft A:
KENDRIE: I feel like something is here.
CHARLIZE: Something like what?
Draft B:
KENDRIE: Can we eat outside tonight?
CHARLIZE: It’s cold.
KENDRIE: I know.
Draft B is the script. Draft A is the notes.
Research
- The specific geography of the Bronx neighborhood — how it sounds, how people move through it
- The Staten Island Ferry crossing as a ritual for commuters
- The specific domestic material culture of the family in the house — objects, furniture, the accumulated texture of a Black family’s household across generations