Bad Tracking

Hey All,

I wrote this last night for the screenplay. Spot the TERRIBLE tracking.

Interior of an apartment. We hear a door unlock, see a door open. Tom walks in. He is forty years old. He is of half-Nigerian, half-Briton ancestry. The room is sparsely furnished. There are no photos or other adornments on the walls, except for one wall-mounted television. A single stuffed chair faces the television, with a small table to the chair’s right. The table holds a tv remote.

“Tracking” is how the reader’s attention moves with the words. So in this case it’s

See interior of apt

Hear interior of apt

See door open

Man walks through

Describe man

Describe walls of apt.

TERRIBLE.

It should be

Interior of an apartment. The room is sparsely furnished. There are no photos or other adornments on the walls, except for one wall-mounted television. A single stuffed chair faces the television, with a small table to the chair’s right. The table holds a tv remote. We hear a door unlock, see a door open. Tom walks in. He is forty years old. He is of half-Nigerian, half-Briton ancestry.

This may seem picky, but it’s crucial. What you want as a writer is for the reader to have a seamless experience of reading, and while we often don’t consciously notice this sort of cluttered writing (I sure didn’t last night), I firmly believe we notice it as a series of tiny stumbles as we read, and it adds up to us being momentarily taken out of the experience of the story.

Thank you,

Derrick