Thanks for posting that voice over. Just saw True Grit this past weekend (love second-run movie houses) but I was so very lost with that voice over. I'm hard of hearing and wear hearing aids, but the narrator spoke so fast and with such a twang in her voice that I couldn't immediately recognize the speech as English. There was so much information in that speech that I missed and I'm sure it affected the way I watched the film. I'm part of the growing population of the audience that has damaged its hearing in one way or another. Just a reminder that the visual image needs to convey what the audio tells.

What about scenes that are just a transition? For example, I have a script where a girl unlocks the door to a ballroom. The action on one side of the door isn't much - the door is locked, she goes to a closet & finds a key - then unlocks the door. The real story action is once she's in the ballroom.

I'm in a writing group & someone criticized the "scene" where I'm just having the girl unlock the door. I suppose it could be cut, but it is, in fact, part of the story for the girl to be locked out of this ballroom - she's not supposed to be in there.

This person didn't understand why it was even a scene. I know that there's hardly anything happening, but I thought if a person is moving from one location to another, I had to have new scene headings.

If the "being locked out" wasn't important, I could just go immediately to the ballroom. But, it kinda is. However, there's no other action in the scene, so is it justified?

(Not sure this person was reading real carefully, btw.)

Judith

@Judith: If the girl's appearance in the ballroom elicits a response from people that she shouldn't be there, wouldn't that accomplish the same point of the scene in question? Even if a scene has a point, which you have to have to justify a scene in the first place, doesn't necessarily mean you must use that scene. Don't bore a reader, keep them entertained. Combine that with the fact that if she enters the ballroom, we can make the deductive leap that she opened the door somehow.

The other option is to elevate the stakes / entertainment value of the scene in question. She's about to be found out. She hides. Perhaps she discovers something while hiding. Or is some sort of peril.

But short of that, it does sound like you may have an unnecessary scene on your hands.

No harm in cutting the scene and trying it that way!