Trimming Tricks of the Trade, Part 4: Psuedo-Slugs

This is the fourth and final post about little things you can do to save lines (and pages) in your script.

#4: PSEUDO-SLUGS

Technically when you use a Secondary Slugline (or Shot), you need to provide a line-space, then go to scene description. For example:

OUTSIDE THE DOOR

Eve uses her body as a barricade.

In the past, I have gotten away with this:

OUTSIDE THE DOOR — Eve uses her body as a barricade.

Note how that potentially saves 2 lines. I call it a pseudo-slug and it can not only save you lines, it also reads really well in action scenes.

Here’s an example from one of my scripts “Stalemate,” optioned several times, but as of yet unproduced:

SNIPER P.O.V. — THROUGH RIFLE CROSSHAIRS

Focuses in on Marty… dead center.

QUINN dives at Mary, knocking him down. The Sniper SHOOTS. A bullet bites dust…

QUINN whips out his Walther. Unloads the magazine at the Sniper, who leaps for cover…

The BOXCAR DOOR rolls open… a GUNMAN vaults out, blazing away with an Ingram machine gun…
 a trail of slugs at…

QUINN AND MARTY who roll apart, bullets RIPPING the ground…

TRUMBULL AND DONOVAN shove Sharon into the limo… the Driver GUNS the engine…

MARTY darts behind his Porsche… machine gun fire pierces the car.

THE LIMO spins away…

And so on. The beginning of each sentence, when capitalized, gives the same effect as a Secondary Slug, but because the scene description begins on the same line as the pseudo-slug, the version of what we wrote above saves about 14 lines of space.

Granted all these tips are pretty mundane stuff. But when you’re looking at a script that clocks in at 135 pages and you knew there were tips like these that combined could knock off 7–10 pages without having to change the substance of the story, you might find great value in such mundane things.

Any other tricks you use to save lines / pages?

[Originally posted 11/27/2008]

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