#2 - "... I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks."

and

#6 - "Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose"".

I'm always trying to limit the character descriptions in action lines to keep the flow, but sometimes it's tough. And I hate reading 'suddenly', and I get angry with myself if that's all that comes to mind when I write line.

#6. Suddenly is just a word. Check how many time it appears in "Chinatown." If your story is great, who cares about "words?"

Chinatown was written by Robert Towne. Unless you can write like Robert Towne I would advise against using the word Suddenly too often.

In answer to the question, per an undated copy of the script for Chinatown that I have, the word "suddenly" is used a total of 12 times. However I wouldn't feel all that comfortable using Towne's script as an example because he was writing a script that was already guaranteed to be produced. He could have put the word "suddenly" in 1,000 times, and it wouldn't have affected the outcome of the film going into production.

If you're writing a selling script, that is a far different situation; and there "words" are critically important in the way you use them to write a great story.

The larger point: As we'll see these next few weeks, many of these 'rules' are about each writer's own style. It's up to each of us to learn what we can from writers and what we read, then develop our own sense of style.